The Unbound Book Festival is set to return to Columbia for its ninth year Thursday.
The festival’s schedule consists of author conversations, panels, readings, workshops and other special events including film screenings at various venues in downtown Columbia. With the festival bringing in about 50 authors from around the country, Alex George, executive director of the festival, considers Unbound to be “a great big four-day celebration of books and reading and writing.”
The festival will begin at 8 p.m. Thursday with the Lit Crawl, an event for ages 21 and over, where local authors will read their works. The crawl will start at Orr Street and move to five other downtown venues throughout the night. The Lit Crawl had formerly taken place Saturday, however, seeing that many attendees were exhausted after the day’s events, the festival opted for a “new and improved” approach, George said.
The Poetry Abound! event will kick off Friday’s events from 4-6 p.m. at Fretboard Coffee, followed by the festival’s keynote conversation with Emily St. John Mandel from 7:30-9:30 p.m. at the Missouri Theatre. Novelist Sequoia Nagamatsu will join St. John Mandel, bestselling author of “Station Eleven,” “The Glass Hotel” and “Sea of Tranquility.”
The keynote conversation is the festival’s only event that requires registration ahead of time. If attendees are unable to acquire free tickets, George recommends people still show up to the Missouri Theater for an opportunity to claim any spare seats.
Saturday will include the main festival programming from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Some of the programming will include a panel of veterans, a romance genre panel as well as discussions over cookbooks and food as a love language, George said.
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“Because there are so many things going on at once on Saturday, it’s a really good idea to plan ahead of time to work out what it is you want to see,” George said.
The Write On! Workshop, which will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at Stephens College’s Windsor Auditorium. The workshop is a series of activities for aspiring and experienced writers to improve their skills and receive feedback from industry professionals. Although much of the festival is free to attend, tickets for the Write On! Workshop cost $50 per person.
A screening of “Once Upon a River” followed by a Q&A with author Bonnie Jo Campbell from 7-9 p.m. Sunday at Ragtag Cinema will wrap up the final day of the festival. Tickets for the screening can be purchased on Ragtag’s website, with child and senior tickets priced at $9 and adult tickets priced at $11.
Parking garages at Eighth Street and Walnut Street, Eighth Street and Cherry Street, and 10th Street and Cherry Street are featured on the event’s map and are free throughout the weekend. Festival-goers can also pay for metered parking on the street between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Evenings and Sundays are free.
More information can be found ot the Unbound Book Festival’s website.