Charleston to Charleston Literary Festival is “a partnership between the Charleston Library Society in historic Charleston, South Carolina, and the celebrated Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex, England. These two organizations, both legendary in their support of all things literary, scholarly, and creative, offer a stimulating weekend series of programs with authors and thinkers from around the world in Charleston, South Carolina.”
The event begins at 2:00 pm on Thursday, November 8, 2018, and continues through Sunday with the final program at 5:00 pm at the Charleston Library Society, 164 King Street. Check out the brochure with the full schedule here.
This year’s program showcases:
● Legendary editor, Tina Brown, who kept diaries through her eight years as editor in chief of Vanity Fair. The result is an insightful, fascinating, and laugh-out-loud funny social history of the excessive eighties.
● Margo Jefferson, whose memoir, Negroland, is a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, class, and American culture, describing the contradictions of her comparatively privileged upbringing in Chicago’s upper-class Black community.
● Deborah Lipstadt, who will discuss her book, Denial: Holocaust History on Trial, and examine its contemporary relevance with Anita Zucker. The film Denial, inspired by the book, will also be screened, preceded by an introduction by its screenwriter, David Hare.
● Charles Spencer, brother to Princess Diana. His book, To Catch a King, documents one of the greatest escapes in British royal history, a fete he will dissect with Charleston’s adopted wordsmith, Bernard Cornwell.
● Stephen Greenblatt, who will interrogate the Collected Works of Shakespeare to construct a checklist of tyranny based on the Bard’s historical dramas. Will he demonstrate the modern-day significance of Shakespeare’s tyrants?
● CNN commentator John Avlon, author and former Marine Elliot Ackerman, and photojournalist Lynsey Addario, who will discuss their shared need to chronical wars and atrocities using written words and photographic images.
● Madeline Miller, whose novel, Circe, about a super-heroine golden witch, makes Homer’s Odyssey pertinent to the 21st century. The Guardian calls Circe “every bit as luminous and compelling as its predecessor.”
● Ramie Targoff, whose biography of Vittoria Colonna, Renaissance Woman, is a timely study of the first published female Italian poet. With a novelist’s flair, she brings history to life and dissects an entire culture.
● Regina Marler and Sarah Milroy, experts on Bloomsbury painter Vanessa Bell, who will discuss the modernist painter, a pivotal figure in 20th-century British art, with her granddaughter, Virginia Nicholson.
● David Hare, who was recently described by The Washington Post as “the premier political dramatist writing in English,” will discuss his memoir, The Blue Touch Paper, and his career as the UK’s foremost political playwright.
● The Daily Beast’s world news editor Christopher Dickey and political playwright David Hare will muse on the implications of the Trump regime in the United States and Brexit in the United Kingdom, as well as the resurgence of nationalism throughout the world.
● United States District Judge Richard Gergel will discuss the pioneering civil rights record of Judge J. Waties Waring with past president of the American Bar Association, Willam Hubbard.
● Authors Bill Goldstein and Alexandra Harris, who will discuss the impact of WWI on US and UK writers and artists like Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, and T.S. Eliot. Was the war a watershed moment for Modernism?
The Festival will take place across two historic venues in the heart of downtown Charleston: the Beaux-Arts building of the Charleston Library Society and the stately Dock Street Theatre.
Each evening the Festival will feature elegant receptions and gatherings, ensuring the opportunity to mingle with internationally renowned authors, journalists, playwrights, and each other.
For more information, visit the website or call 843-723-9912.
–Tidelines Editors
(Image credits: CVB and CLS websites)