Bibliophiles, rejoice! The 2021 Unbound Book Festival begins Tuesday in its new virtual format.
Dedicated to bringing readers together, the festival is typically done in one jam-packed weekend in April on the Stephens College campus. This year, virtual panels and author readings will take place over three months, with a panel scheduled almost every Tuesday and Thursday through late April.
Panels will convene on Zoom and are free and open to the public.
In a news release from the city, festival founder Alex George said spreading out Unbound allows people to attend more of the festival because events don’t have to be scheduled simultaneously. He also hopes the festival can reach more people in its virtual format.
“One of the beauties of a virtual festival is that you can attend no matter where you may be in the world. So our geographical scope is, we hope, about to explode,” George said. “We hope that folks will make it a regular part of their week to tune in to some Unbound programming.”
The festival was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not wanting to disappoint festival fans, organizers introduced “Housebound Unbound,” a limited run of author conversations and panels held on Zoom.
“Not only were the ‘Housebound’ events great fun — and just as relaxed and as stimulating as the usual in-person Unbound events — they were also very well attended and enthusiastically received,” George said.
Panel topics this year include conversations about the lack of diversity in the publishing field, readings from award-winning poets and discussions about LGBTQ narratives in young adult fiction. A complete schedule of 2021 panels can be found on the festival’s website.
Festivities begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday with the panel “Alone Together,” a reading from a book by the same name that addresses the loneliness of the COVID-19 pandemic. Four of the book’s writers will talk about their contributions in a discussion led by the book’s editor, Jennifer Haupt.
The festival will conclude three months later with a keynote event from Jericho Brown and Tracy Smith, two Pulitzer Prize-winning poets, on April 23.
More than 60 writers will be participating in the virtual events. Read author profiles for each panelist on the festival’s website.