Festival of Books Scheduling Woes

Another year, another great set of writerly panels to look forward to at this weekend's LA Times Festival of Books.  Each year there are tough decisions that must be made, panels that you'd love to see but they overlap and you must choose.   This year, however, the scheduling is brutal. I would like to offer up my scheduling services for next year to avoid the tough decisions we'll all have to make this year.

I offer up Saturday as an example:
Women of the Slipstream includes Aimee Bender, Sara Shun-lien Bynum, Kelly Link and Miranda Mellis, moderated by Rob Spillman.  It is at 2:30pm. Fiction: Not So Ordinary People includes Tony Earley, Dinaw Mengestu, Stewart O'Nan and Ann Packer, moderated by Laila Lalami. It is at, you guessed it, 2:30pm. In this case, I've decided to break for the Lalami panel. A tough choice, but it had to be made.

I'm also quite interested in attending Fiction: Novel Lives with Jill Bialosky, Nicholas Delbanco, Brian Hall and Marianne Wiggins. But alas, that is at 1pm, when David Ulin will be interviewing Maxine Hong Kingston.  Ack! Such tough decisions to make!

But the laws of physics are truly bent out of shape on Sunday and I still can't quite wrap my head around what to do:
First Fiction: Starting Out (nearly always a brilliant panel!) includes Julie Buxbaum, Rebecca Johnson, Min Jin Lee and Mark Sarvas, with Bernadette Murphy moderating. Fantastic, right? It's at 10am. Fiction: Unconventional Visions, however, includes Ben Ehrenreich, Keith Gessen, Lydia Millet and Yannick Murphy and is moderated by Carolyn Kellogg. Seriously good stuff, right? It is at 10:30am.

Who, I ask you, who did this? I cry foul. Am I meant to see 20 minutes of one, then dash across campus to see the other?  Ugh. I've been agonizing over this ever since the panel schedules came out and I thought I'd have it sorted by now. But I don't. 

There is also the matter of the Biography: Literary California panel with Richard Rayner, Anthony Arthur, Philip L. Fradkin and Judith Freeman at 3pm that directly conflicts with the Fiction: Straight Talk panel with Lisa Fugard, Dagoberto Gilb, Adam Langer and Marisa Silver. Madness! Madness, I tell you.

The good news: there are lots of great panels to choose from and we're oh so lucky to have all this writerly goodness going on in our own backyard. I shouldn't be complaining, should I?

The net/net: I'll have to figure this out eventually and I'll post my schedule later this week. I reserve the right to change on the fly as needed (a really great bookish conversation with a writer can throw the whole day off and it's worth it!) but I'll have the "working" schedule up later this week.

If you'll be attending the fest, which panels are you looking forward to? Which ones are you bummed about having to miss? And if you're back-seating this from afar, which panels would you go to if you could?

Comments

[Brian Hadd]

Fiction: Unconventional Visions would be my viewing choice. LA is mighty fine literary.

[Edan]

I'm teaching in Ohio this spring, and I'm even more bummed about missing this year's Book Fair after reading your post. So much good stuff on offer! Also, this year Vroman's will have a booth!