2024 FAB Festival

The Farmington Author & Book Festival (FAB) celebrates the diversity of Michigan’s stories and storytellers and is a collaboration between KickstART Farmington and the Farmington Community Library. FAB Fest takes place on June 1st, 2024, during Art on the Grand in Memorial Park near the Masonic Hall in downtown Farmington. The festival features author readings, book signings, discussions, workshops, and more, along with a book marketplace offering publications by over fifty area authors and publishers.

This event is outdoors in Memorial Park. Bring along a lawn chair and make a day of it! Blue Hat Coffee is next door and has a delicious menu of baked goods, sandwiches, and, of course, coffee.

We are pleased to announce that award-winning poet and National Book Award finalist Carolyn Forché will be the keynote presenter at the 2024 Farmington Author & Book Festival!

2024 FAB Fest Schedule

11:00-11:45 am: Children’s Book Readings with authors Molly David (My Mischievous Wheelchair), Martha Johnston (Iki and his Mighty Friends), Jeffrey Roy Ford (Steadman Squirrel)

Bring your young ones and young at heart as authors Molly David (My Mischievous Wheelchair), Martha Johnston (Iki and his Mighty Friends), and Jeffrey Roy Ford (Steadman Squirrel) read from their children’s books as part of the 2024 Farmington Author & Book Festival (FAB Fest).

1:00-1:45 pm: The MacGuffin 40^th Anniversary Reading

The MacGuffin turns 40! The MacGuffin, publishes poetry and short prose for up-and-coming and established writers from around the country (and the world). Editorial reviewers share their favorite poems and stories from The MacGuffin’s 40 years of publication. PLUS—talk with new journal editor, Brett Griffiths and a team of poets and writers who review our submissions. 2023 Royal Oak Artist Laureate Roberta Brown; Poet and fiction writer Alexander Payne Morgan; poet and Detroit literary community leader Mitch Vanacker, up-and-coming children’s book author Melissa Converse, and 2024 Celery Chapbook contest winner Kevin Griffin, and founding editor Art Lindenberg can discuss the “Wow Factor” we look for in a poem or story, as well as ways to connect and engage your local community while working on your own book!

2:00-2:45 pm: A Conversation and Reading with Poets Joy Gaines-Friedler and Keith Taylor

Joy Gaines-Friedler is a multiple Pushcart Nominee, and she has won numerous awards and has been published in over a hundred literary magazines and journals. Her poetry books include Capture Theory (2018) and Dutiful Heart (2013). Learn more about Joy here: https://www.joygainesfriedler.com/home.

Keith Taylor’s poems, stories, book reviews, translations and feature articles have appeared in many journals, magazines and newspapers in North America and in Europe. All the Time You Want: Selected Poems 1977–2017 was published earlier this year by Dzanc Books and What Can the Matter Be will be published in August by Wayne State University Press. Learn more about Keith here: https://www.keithtaylorannarbor.com/. (Photo of Keith (c) Doug Coombe.)

3:00-3:45 pm: Romance Writers Roundtable, featuring D.A. Henneman, Isabelle Drake, and Natalie Dunbar, hosted by Rebecca Brown

While it hasn’t always been part of her occupation, writing has always been part of DA Henneman’s life. Poetry and song lyrics through teenage angst (no you won’t get to read any of them), short stories in college classes (perhaps you will get to read some of them), and random marketing materials during her stint as a flower shop owner. Even with all of that writing in her life, ten chapters of a book stayed buried in her filing cabinet until she closed her flower shop. The timing was finally right, and the Power of Four series was born. Most days she can be found on her blog posting about her writing journey. You can find her at www.dahenneman.com.

Escape to Bestselling author, Natalie Dunbar’s world for an enjoyable and satisfying read. She writes smart, strong women and loving, irresistible men, and the occasional bad boy. There is always a happy ending. Her books run the gambit from contemporary romance to paranormal romance, science fiction romance and romantic suspense. A retired engineer living in the Detroit area, she has been a longtime member of RWA. Her books have also been featured in articles for Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, The Oakland Press, The Warren Weekly, and The Eastsider newspapers. Visit her website at http://www.nataliedunbar.com. Follow her on FB: https://www.facebook.com/natalie.dunbar.779 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/natalie.dunbar.779

Isabelle Drake is the fiction alias of Melissa Ford Lucken. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in Special Education. She teaches creative writing and composition and hosts the podcast Washington Square OnAir. She can be found: https://allmylinks.com/isabelledrake

4:00-4:45 pm: Author Reading with Award-Winning Writers Kathe Koja & Stephen Mack Jones

Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and has received many awards, including the Shirley Jackson Award and Bram Stoker Award. The novel Catherine the Ghost will be published by CLASH Books in October 2024. Koja also creates and produces live and virtual events. More information is available at https://kathekoja.com/. (Photo of Kathe Koja by Rick Lieder.)

Stephen Mack Jones is a published poet, an award-winning playwright, and a recipient of the prestigious Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellowship. He is the author of the acclaimed and award-winning August Snow novels including August Snow, Lives Laid Away, Dead of Winter, and Deux X. More information is available at https://www.stephenmackjones.com/.

5:00-6:30 pm: Keynote Presentation/Reading with Carolyn Forché, followed by conversation with Joy Gaines-Friedler

Carolyn Forché’s first volume, Gathering the Tribes, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, was followed by The Country Between Us, The Angel of History, and Blue Hour. Her most recent collection is In the Lateness of the World. She is also the author of the memoir What You Have Heard Is True (Penguin Random House, 2019), a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others, which was nominated for the 2019 National Book Awards. She has translated Mahmoud Darwish, Claribel Alegria, and Robert Desnos. Her famed international anthology, Against Forgetting, has been praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice,” and is followed by the 2014 anthology The Poetry of Witness. In 1998 in Stockholm, she received the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award for her human rights advocacy and the preservation of memory and culture.

Carolyn grew up in the Detroit area, lived in the Farmington community for many years, graduated from Our Lady of Sorrows High School, and later studied creative writing at Michigan State University and Bowling Green State University.

She is Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Maryland with her husband, photographer Harry Mattison.

7:00-9:00 pm: Join us for the afterparty at KickstART Gallery with music, refreshments, good friends, and great conversation (23616 Farmington Road).

FAB Fest is generously sponsored by the Farmington Friends of the Library, The MacGuffin, a national literary journal produced at Schoolcraft College, Book Beat, and the Farmington & Farmington Hills Foundation for Youth & Families.

AUTHORS & PUBLISHERS PARTICIPATING IN BOOK MARKETPLACE