By Suneal Kolluri
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Illustration by ERICA PINTO/Daily Bruin
Everyone who is anyone will be at the Festival of Books this
weekend.
Okay, maybe not everyone who is anyone, but Maya Angelou and
Barney the purple dinosaur will definitely be there.
Countless other renowned authors and performers will also be
appearing on the various stages set up at the Los Angeles Times
Festival of Books, taking place all over the UCLA campus.
Diversely themed stages will be scattered about the campus,
providing entertainment for those attending the festival.
“(The stages are) for a variety of entertainment and
literary purposes,” said Jose Eskenazi, manager of consumer
events for the Los Angeles Times.
Six stages will be set up all around campus: the Barnes and
Noble Stage, the Cooking Stage, the Reading by 9 Stage, the
Etcetera Stage, The Target Stage and the Poetry Stage.
The Barnes and Noble Stage, perhaps the most literature-oriented
of them all, will be located in Perloff Quad and will feature
numerous literary celebrities.
Organizers for Barnes and Noble, one of the festival’s
main sponsors, aim to provide festival-goers with presentations by
authors of both upcoming novels and recent best sellers.
“That’s how it worked out this year, they were all
pretty big books,” said Donna Passannante, director of author
promotions and special events for Barnes and Noble. “But
Perloff Quad is a big venue so you’ve got to have some big
authors.”
In this process, the stage obtained writers from all genres of
literature. Fran Drescher will be discussing her book “Cancer
Shmancer,” Ralph Nader will discuss his political book and
author Michael Connelly will host a discussion about his latest
novel, “City of Bones.”
“I think there’s something for everybody …
I’ve been lucky enough that at the end of the day, we end up
with quite a diverse group of authors,” Passannante said.
Passannante said that she actually had to turn authors down for
the event.
Yet perhaps the most eagerly awaited UCLA visitor will be poet
Maya Angelou. She is currently touring around the country making
appearances, so Barnes and Noble was able to snag her for the
festival.
She will be at the Barnes and Noble Stage and will be
interviewed both by the audience and by professional interviewer
Michael Silverblatt on stage.
Other stages will also be showcasing various celebrities and
entertainment acts.
Target will sponsor a stage focusing on children’s
entertainment, where Barney will be making a cameo and “The
School House Rock” will be played. In past years, the area
around that particular stage has gotten fairly wild.
“The children’s area at the festival is totally
packed, it’s crazy,” said Lara Furar, senior
programming manager for the Los Angeles Times. “In that area,
you have the storytelling stage on one side and the Target stage on
the other and there are activities going on in there as
well.”
Children also go wild over that jolly purple dinosaur, Barney,
who has been a favorite for over 10 years.
“He does song and dance numbers … these kids go nuts
over him. For 3- and 4-year-olds, it’s like seeing the
Beatles,” Eskenazi said.
The Reading by 9 Stage will feature various celebrities reading
some of their favorite stories
“Reading By 9″ is a literacy program put on by the
Los Angeles Times that tries to get kids to read at grade level by
the age of nine.
Mayor James Hahn, singer-songwriter Jose Luis Orozco and others
will participate in the storytelling. The stage will feature a
celebration of the 100th anniversary of “Peter
Rabbit.”
The Etcetera stage will also host various performances. This
stage consists of performances in theater, culture and dance,
including performances by UCLA ensembles like Awaken A Cappella and
the UCLA Chinese Ensemble.
Cooking and poetry stages will feature famous figures in those
fields.
If past years are any indication of what this year will be like,
then the areas around the stages should be packed.
“L.A. surprisingly is the biggest book market in the
country, more so than New York ,” said Eskenazi.
“It’s a great opportunity to come out to the West
Coast.”
According to Eskenazi, last year’s festival brought about
120,000 people out to the UCLA campus. And that was without both
Barney and Maya Angelou enticing the masses to come to the
festival.
“We just made calls and asked (the guests) if they want to
be a part of the greatest literary event in the country,”
Eskenazi said.