One of West Virginia's best known living authors has joined the lineup for this year's West Virginia Book Festival in time to discuss his newest book, scheduled for release in early October.
For many West Virginians, Homer Hickam is an iconic name - the Coalwood native and trained engineer inspired droves of children in the Mountain State and beyond with the high-flying childhood exploits described in his 1998 memoir "Rocket Boys." The book became an instant hit, and its 1999 movie adaptation, "October Sky," was also widely critically acclaimed.
"It just seemed like a natural fit that he should be at the West Virginia Book Festival; he's very beloved in West Virginia," said Toni Blessing, associate director of the Kanawha County Public Library. "The whole purpose of the West Virginia Book Festival is to really promote West Virginia authors; this year, since it's our comeback year, we had to limit the number of authors, but we will have many West Virginia authors in our marketplace. We really want to bring attention to West Virginia authors, so when we found out Mr. Hickam has a book coming out on Oct. 13, we thought, 'well, he needs to be at the festival.'"
Hickam has published more than a dozen books, both fiction and non. His latest is a novel, "Bringing Albert Home," but is billed as a prequel to "Rocket Boys." It centers on his parents, caught in a "love triangle" between Hickam's father, his mother and his mother's other love, an alligator named Albert, a gift from former boyfriend Buddy Ebsen, actor and star of "The Beverly Hillbillies."
"Ultimately, 'Carrying Albert Home' is a story that is much more than it might seem at first glance. In fact, it is a testament to that strange and marvelous emotion we inadequately call love," Hickam said in an email. "I was very pleased to receive an invitation to the WV Book Festival. As always, it's nice to go home for a visit, especially when I get to meet lots of Mountain State readers."
This year's Book Festival will be held in the Charleston Civic Center on Oct. 23 and 24, a Friday and Saturday, and will coincide with Charleston's fall version of FestivALL.
Hickam is joining a lineup of authors that include "American Gods" author Neil Gaiman; Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of "My Sister's Keeper" and "Nineteen Minutes;" Jeff Shaara, bestselling author of historical works that include "Gods and Generals" and "The Last Full Measure," and critically acclaimed children's author Jaqueline Woodson, author of "Brown Girl Dreaming," the winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
Hickam will give a talk at 9 a.m. on Oct. 24. Gaiman will be featured at the Civic Center coliseum on Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. Picoult will speak on Oct. 24 at 3 p.m. in the coliseum. All three appearances are free and open to the public, as are all events at the festival.
In addition to author presentations, the event will feature workshops dedicated to writing and self-publishing, as well as the Kanawha library's annual used book sale; the marketplace, which showcases local authors and book-related vendors; and the WordPlay area for children.
Also on Oct. 23, West Virginia authors Cat Pleska and Fran Simone will host a writers workshop. Simone, a professor emeritus of Marshall University and former director of the West Virginia Writing Project, and Pleska, an essayist for West Virginia Public Radio and a book reviewer for The Charleston Gazette, have recently written memoirs and will focus their workshop on memoir writing and information gathering, Blessing said.
This time last year, the Kanawha library was still reeling from the loss of 40 percent of its total operating budget, the result of a West Virginia Supreme Court case that determined Kanawha County Schools was not obligated to help fund the libraries. The library canceled the book festival -- part of budget cuts meant to sustain its operations -- and began a campaig to save its nine-library, county-wide system, from major cutbacks. After an initial failed attempt to pass a levy attached to a levy for county schools, Kanawha County voters passed a library-only levy last November to bring the library up to its previous funding levels.
"We have other wonderful national authors, and now we have the opportunity to have Homer Hickam here - we're just speechless about how it all fell together and what a wonderful lineup it's going to be," said Terry Wooten, the library's marketing and development manager.
The West Virginia Book Festival is presented by The Library Foundation of Kanawha County Inc., Kanawha County Public Library, The West Virginia Humanities Council, The Charleston Gazette-Mail, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, The West Virginia Library Commission and West Virginia Center for the Book. Sponsors for the event are The Martha Gaines and Russell Wehrle Memorial Foundation and The Friends of The Library Foundation. For more information, visit www.wvbookfestival.org.
Reach Lydia Nuzum at lydia.nuzum@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5189 or follow @lydianuzum on Twitter.