Passaic County Book Festival 2024

• Reading to Dogs
• Poetry
• Arts & Crafts
• Children’s Story Time
• Olmsted Walking Tours of Weasel Brook Park
• Book & Yoga
• Author Meet & Greets
• Food & Music

11:00 AM  The Power of Storytelling: Instilling Values and Life Lessons Through Books (Moderated by Violetta Aybar-Maki with Panelists Roberto Concepcion, Vita Maggio, Valerie Munro, and Ken Schept)

12:15 PM  Get to know/In Conversation – Resilience and Empowerment (A conversation with Adam Berg and Miriam Simon, moderated by Shannon Ferber)

1:15 PM  Enchanted Realms: Exploring the Boundaries of Paranormal Imagination (Moderated by Diana Filippi with Panelists Debbie Cocchio, Mickey Flagg, Lisa Hodorovych, and D.V. Stone.)

2:15 PM Get to know/In Conversation – New Adult Fiction (A conversation with Kainat Azhar and Priyanka Taslim moderated by Diana Filippi)

3:15 PM  Unraveling the Mystery: Techniques and Twists in Suspense Fiction (Moderated by Janette Pardo with Panelists Miriam Allenson, Elle Hartford, Kristen Houghton, Dania Ramos, and Lori Robbins.)

11:15 AM Passionate Prose: Crafting Intimate Connections in Romance Novels  (Moderated by Shannon Ferber with Panelists Maria K. Alexander, Brooke Dean, Skye McDonald, and Carol Van Den Hende.) 

12:15 PM Get to Know/ In Conversation – Foodies (A conversation with Kathy Biehl and Tracey Ceurvels moderated by Nick Bastean.)

1:15 PM Literary Landscapes: Settings and Atmosphere in Fictional Worlds (Moderated by Janette Pardo with panelists Michelle Cameron, Marina Cramer. Terri-Lynne DeFino, and Suzanne Trauth.)

2:15 PM Get to know/In Conversation – Intersections of History and Storytelling (Moderated by Tessa Payer with panelists Maria C. Palmer and Louis Picone.)

3:15 PM From Main Street to Memory Lane: Exploring our Local Heritage (Moderated by Tessa Payer with panelists Richard Polton, Vincent DeRosa and Veronica Ditko.)

The Poetry area at this year’s Book Festival is brought to us by John Trause and his colleagues. Join us in a day filled with readings and discussions alongside local poets.

JOHN J. TRAUSE, the Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press, 2017), a book of traditional and experimental poems; Picture This: For Your Eyes and Ears (Dos Madres Press, 2016), a book of poems on art, film, and photography; Exercises in High Treason (great weather for MEDIA, 2016), a book of fictive translations, found poems, and manipulated texts; Eye Candy for Andy (13 Most Beautiful… Poems for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, Finishing Line Press, 2013); Inside Out, Upside Down, and Round and Round (Nirala Publications, 2012); Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007; rev. ed. 2014); and Latter-Day Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off Broadway.  His translations, poetry, and visual work appear internationally in many journals and anthologies, including The Antioch Review; the artists’ periodical Crossings; the Dada journal Maintenant; the journal Offerta Speciale; the Great Weather for Media anthologies It’s Animal but Merciful (2012), I Let Go of the Stars in My Hand (2014), Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (2019), and Paper Teller Diorama (2021); and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015).  Marymark Press has published his visual poetry and art as broadsides and sheets.  He is the subject of a 30-on-30-in-30 essay on The Operating System, written by Don Zirilli, and an author of an essay on Baroness Elsa at the same site, both in April 2016.  He has shared the stage with Steven Van Zandt, Anne Waldman, Karen Finley, Andrei Codrescu, and Jerome Rothenberg; the page with Billy Collins, Lita Hornick, William Carlos Williams, Woody Allen, Ted Kooser, Victor Buono, and Pope John Paul II; and the cage with the Cumaean Sibyl, Ezra Pound, Hannibal Lecter, Andrei Chikatilo, and George “The Animal” Steele.  He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, N. J., and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.

Visit the Readings to Dogs tent and schedule your time with:

Story times start at 11:15 AM and continue throughout the day, read by authors appearing at the festival and librarians.  Join us in the Story Time Tent!