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Sunday Salon: Boston Book Festival 2023

[Edited: With all my connectivity issues yesterday, my Sunday Salon post never actually posted! Thank you, Deb Nance, for letting me know!]

The Boston Book Festival was Saturday, Oct. 14th, and I rode into town on the T with a retired librarian friend. It was great to make it back for the BBF’s 15th anniversary year, especially as I missed last year.

The vendor booths were set up in Copley Square in front of the Boston Public Library. After what seemed like months of rainy Saturdays, it was a beautiful fall morning and even felt a little warm in the sun. The nice weather didn’t last, but by the time the clouds moved in and the temperature dropped, we were taking a walking tour of Boston and then were mostly inside to eat lunch and attend the afternoon panel discussions we chose to go to.

Boston Public Library main entrance
Motto on the north facade says THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY
Another view of the Boston Public Library
The Massachusetts Center for the Book was giving away free books, so we got in line early to spin the wheel and nab our freebies. I picked up a copy of The Islanders by Meg Mitchell Moore.
Pop-Up Poetry booth!
Check out the line of people waiting for a pop-up poem.

Photos from the interior of the Boston Public Library. Such a beautiful building — a blending of old and new!

The courtyard inside the Boston Public Library
Wearing my banned books scarf and showing off my Massachusetts Center for the Book tote bag. You might have noticed I have two empty tote bags here, and, yes, I did fill them both.
Inside the new wing of the Boston Public Library
The public television station WGBH does a regular broadcast from the library

We had lunch at the library’s News Feed Cafe, and attended a session with a panel of debut novelists, Debut Novelists: Coming of Age. Don’t the authors look young?! 😉

Authors on this panel were James Frankie Thomas, author of Idlewild; Christy Cashman, author of The Truth About Horses; and Rebekah Bergman, author of The Museum of Human History.

Check out this bird’s-eye view of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square
Church of the Covenant on Newbury Street
Waiting for the panel to begin
l to r: Andre Dubus Jr., Jennifer Haigh, Richard Russo

My first panel discussion of the day was “Fictions of Class, Fictions of Place” with Andre Dubus Jr. and Richard Russo, moderated by Jennifer Haigh. Jennifer Haigh is one of my favorite novelists.

For our last session of the day before heading home, we attended a panel at Old South Church called Love, Motherhood, and Ambition with (r to l) Sadeqa Johnson, Jean Kwok, and Elizabeth L. Silver, moderated by Joanna Rakoff.

After lunch we took a literary walking tour of Boston’s Back Bay, and I was planning to include photos from the tour today, but I’m visiting family in Maryland and a squirrel blew the transformer outside their house this morning, so between spending time with the baby, checking out the squirrel carcass on the street with its guts literally blown clean out of it, and packing the car, my old trusty laptop is running low on battery power and now don’t have time to add the rest of the photos to this post before my laptop dies and/or the baby wakes up from her morning nap. (Although I do hear the electrical company truck outside now.)

Anyway, I also forgot to take pictures of my BBF book haul before going away for the weekend, so maybe all the missing photos will make it into a future post!

I’m linking up to Sunday Salon today.

Sunday Salon is to encourage conversation about books and book-ish things, but can expand into many other topics. The weekly link-up and Facebook group are hosted by the busy bee Deb Nance of Readerbuzz.