UPDATE 3/15: LitFest has been cancelled due to the threat of heavy rain -- it has been rescheduled to May 12.
by Timothy Rutt
LitFest Pasadena, the area's first community-wide book festival, may be taking place in central Pasadena, but it has an Altadena sensibility.
Or at least a lot of Altadena authors, says Michele Zack, who is one of them, and has been heavily involved in pulling the March 17 event together.
The troika that started the event consists of Pasadena Star News public editor Larry Wilson, who was raised in Altadena; Altadena resident, novelist, and USC creative writing teacher Jervey Tervalon; and Tom Coston, president of the Light Bringer Project and the man behind Pasadena's Doo-Dah Parade. Zack says that "the idea in the beginning is to do the Doo-Dah Parade version of the LA Times' Festival of Books."
Other Altadena participants include novelist Michelle Huneven (Blame), Peggy Sue Davis, and Joseph Shuldiner (book designer, one of the founders of the defunct Altadena Urban Farmer's Market, organizer of the Institute for Domestic Technology, and manager of the not-yet-happening Loma Alta Park Farmer's Market). Zack, author of the definitive histories of Altadena and Sierra Madre, will moderate a panel on writing local history
Zack says that the event will also have two Pulitzer Prize winners: historian Dan Howe, and restaurant reviewer Jonathan Gold (whose review of Altadena's Bulgarini Gelato was one of the reasons he received the award).
There will be something for everybody: a children's area will feature storytelling, a Quidditch demonstration, Shakespeare from the Foshay Learning Center, and the Marshall Fundamental School a cappella singers.
And: there will be food trucks.
One of the credits for the festival is "In memory of Octavia Butler." Butler, who died in 2006, was one of the only African-American women to write science fiction and fantasy, a MacArthur "genius" grant recipient, and lived in Pasadena and Altadena most of her life.
LitFest Pasadena runs from 9:30 AM- 5 PM at Central Park in Pasadena, just south of the Castle Green, on Sat., March 17. For more information, check out their website at litfestpasadena.org.
