By Erin Wood
The Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) has announced the lineup for the 2024 Six Bridges Book Festival, which will be held September 23-29, 2024.
Celebrating its 21st year, the Six Bridges Book Festival will host approximately 50 authors in virtual and in-person panel discussions, readings, book signings, and other programs.
Most festival events will be free and open to the public and will be held at CALS’s Library Square in downtown Little Rock. In addition to offering an opportunity for thousands of readers to meet authors, the festival will send presenters into local schools.
The 2024 festival will feature in-person presenters including; Kamilah Cole, author of the young adult fantasy So Let Them Burn, an instant national indie bestseller; Garrard Conley, author of the New York Times best-selling memoir Boy Erased, now a major motion picture, and the novel All the World Beside, published in March; Crystal Wilkinson, the author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a culinary memoir, and the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence; and many others. Authors will continue to be announced throughout the summer.
On Sunday, September 29, the weekend will conclude with a special ticketed event to raise funds in support of the annual book festival. Ann Patchett, the best-selling novelist and author of essays and children’s books, will be joined by Robin Preiss Glasser, illustrator of the Fancy Nancy series, for an onstage conversation about creativity and collaboration at CALS’s Ron Robinson Theater.
For details, visit cals.org/six-bridges-book-festival/.
Hot Springs native, Erin Wood is a writer, editor, and publisher in Little Rock. She owns and runs www.etaliapress.com. Wood is author of “Women Make Arkansas: Conversations With 50 Creatives” (April 2019) and editor of and a contributor to “Scars: An Anthology” (2015).
