Eighth Annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books To Feature 95 Panels and Solo Appearances, 325 Authors

NOTE TO EDITORS: New media credential requirements and deadlines have been posted in the Media Center section of the festival’s Web site: www.latimes.com/festivalofbooks.

LOS ANGELES, April 9, 2003 – The eighth annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, to be held April 26-27 at UCLA, will feature 95 author panels and discussion sessions covering a broad literary landscape from Iraq, Cuba and inner-city L.A. to corporate America after Enron and the good, the bad and the ugly in Hollywood today.

More than 325 of the country’s best-selling authors are scheduled to participate in this year’s festival, which will be held from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 26, and 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 27.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books will also feature seven stages showcasing book and poetry readings, cooking demonstrations, children’s storytelling and cartoon characters, and music, drama and dance performances, and more than 300 exhibitors including specialty booksellers and smaller publishers.

Admission is free to the public. However, tickets will be required to attend author panel discussions and lectures. Beginning April 20, tickets will be available free of charge at all participating Southern California Ticketmaster locations. A limited number of tickets also will be available on-site. On-campus parking is $7.

General event information is available online at www.latimes.com/festivalofbooks or by calling 1-800-LA TIMES ext. 7BOOK. Detailed information on all festival activities will be published in the April 20 edition of The Times.

Author Sessions

Solo author sessions will feature Mitch Albom, A. Scott Berg, T.C. Boyle, Ray Bradbury and Michael Crichton.

“In Conversation With” duos include:

· Carol Channing with Sam Rubin, entertainment reporter, KTLA TV Morning News

· Sandra Cisneros with Luis Rodriguez

· Mary Higgins Clark with Connie Martinson, host of the syndicated cable television program, “Connie Martinson Talks Books”

· Paul Conrad with Robert Scheer

· Michael Dyson with Karen Grigsby Bates

· James Ellroy and Helen Knode

· David Halberstam and Gay Talese

· Patricia Heaton and Doris Roberts

· Brian Jacques with Mike Kennedy

· Jonathan Kellerman with Faye Kellerman

· Maxine Kingston with Carol Muske-Dukes

· Elmore Leonard with Barry Siegel, author and Los Angeles Times

editorial writer

· Cheech Marin with Robert Lopez, Los Angeles Times staff reporter

· Alice McDermott with Michael Frank

· Terry McMillan with Paula Woods

· Carl Reiner with Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

· Richard Rodriguez with Warren Olney, host of PRI’s “To The

Point” and KCRW FM’s “Which Way L.A.?”

· Jane Smiley with Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW FM’s “Bookworm”

· Scott Turow with Ridley Pearson

· Edmund White with Michael Silverblatt

· Henry Winkler and Marlee Matlin

· Military/International Affairs – “American Power and the War in Iraq,” “Cauldron of Turmoil: The Middle East,” “From Mogadishu to Baghdad: Life During Wartime,” “How We Fight Now: The American Way of War,” “War Crimes: Guilt and the Pursuit of Justice”

· Current Interest – “The Boom and the Bust: America After Enron,” “Rants, Screeds and Other Manifestos of Our Time,” “The Politics of Sports”

· Biography and History – “Lives of the Artists,” “Great American Lives,” “History’s Dark Truths,” “The Legacy of Lewis & Clark,” “Notorious Lives”

· Ethnic Interest – “Beyond Magical Realism: Latin American Writers Today,” “Cuba Agonistes,” “The Ties That Bind: Community in Black Fiction,” “Voices from the East: Asia American Fiction”

· Children and Families – “Books for Kids,” “Our Children, Our Future: Education in the 21st Century,” “Picture This: The Art of Children’s Books”

· Fiction – “Coming of Age,” “Cultures in Collision,” “First Novels,” “Haunted by the Past,” “Surviving to Tell the Tale,” “Telling History’s Truths,” “The End of the Affair”

· Hollywood/Entertainment – “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Hollywood Today,” “Page to Screen”

· Los Angeles/California – “Crime in the Hills: L.A. Mayhem,” “Geography as Fate: N.Y. versus L.A.,” “Heart of the State: Writing from the Central Valley,” “La Vida Loca: The Gangs of L.A.,” “ Los Angeles Now: America’s Noir Capital,” “Los Angeles: Playing It As It Lays,” “West Coast Crime: Murders and Motives”

· Memoir – “Larger than Life,” “Political Lives,” “When the Going Gets Tough”

· Mystery-thriller – “Dregs & Low Lifes: The Underworld in Modern Fiction,” “Freaky Deaky: From Hell to Hilarious”

· Poetry – “Identity and Voice,” “The Music of Language,” “The Personal and the Political,” “Working Class Lives”

· Journalism and publishing – “Are the Media Biased?,” “Publishing Today”

· Religion – “Rediscovering the Word of God,” “The Spirit in the Modern World”

· Science – “The Seduction of Science,” “Writing Science: The World Around Us”

· Women – “Family Affair: Mothers and Daughters,” “Redefining Feminism: Past & Present,” “Women in Hollywood,” “Women Writing Science”

· Writing –”Art of the Memoir: Political Lives,” “Beyond Chekhov: The Short Story Today,” “Brit Lit Now: From the Pages of Granta,” “Celebrating the Paris Review and New York Review of Books,” “Get Real: Creative Nonfiction Now”

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Awards Ceremony

The 23rd annual Los Angeles Times Book Prize awards ceremony will be the highlight of the festival. Award-winning author A. Scott Berg will emcee the ceremony, which will be held at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 26, at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

Berg is a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and author of the highly-acclaimed biographies “Lindbergh,” “Max Perkins: Editor of Genius” and “Goldwyn.”

The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, established in 1980, recognize outstanding literary achievements in biography, current interest, history, poetry, science and technology, fiction, first fiction, mystery/thriller, and young adult fiction.

In addition, the Robert Kirsch Award annually recognizes the body of work of an author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the Western United States. It is named after Robert Kirsch, The Times’ book critic for more than 25 years prior to his death in 1980.

Presenting the nine category awards will be Gayle Anderson, Eric Lax, T. Jefferson Parker, George Plimpton, John Rechy, Dava Sobel, Ronald Steel, Susan Straight and Quincy Troupe. The Kirsch award will be presented by author Jonathan Kirsch, son of the late book critic.

Ticket prices are $14 per person. Tickets may be purchased through the UCLA Central Ticket Office at 310/825-2101 or online at www.tickets.ucla.edu and through Ticketmaster at 213/365-3500 or www.ticketmaster.com. Additional charges apply for online ticket orders.

Information about the Book Prize awards ceremony and awards program is available at www.latimes.com/bookprizes or by calling 1-800-LA TIMES, ext. 72366.

Since 1980, the Book Prizes have honored numerous internationally distinguished literary figures including Ray Bradbury, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Isherwood, Milan Kundera, Ursula Le Guin, Frank McCourt, David McCullough, Tillie Olsen, Carl Sagan and W.G. Sebald.

Festival of Books Sponsors

Presenting sponsors of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books are Barnes & Noble and Target. Major sponsor are Borders and Ticketmaster. Contributing sponsors are Crown Books, HBO Films, Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Odwalla and Starbucks Coffee.

Media sponsors are KTLA 5, ESPN Radio AM (710), KABC AM (790), KCRW FM (89.9), KFWB AM (980), KKJZ FM (88.1), K-MOZART FM (105.1), KPCC FM (89.3), KPFK FM (90.7), K-SURF AM (1260), Radio Disney AM (1110) and Los Angeles Magazine.

The Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing company, is the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the country and the winner of 30 Pulitzer Prizes, including three this year in national reporting, feature writing and feature photography. The Times publishes four daily regional editions covering the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Orange and Ventura counties and the San Fernando Valley, as well as a National edition.