"We made a lot of great friendships with other writers," says
Women Read/Women Write Book Festival co-founder Gwyn Cready, about last year's event. "I'd say we built a kind of sisterhood among the writers and a lot of the attendees -- but there were a lot of men, too."
Cready and fellow organizer Meredith Mileti have even higher expectations for the second annual free festival, this year to be held Oct. 27 at the Galleria in Mt. Lebanon. More than 35 authors are expected -- mostly women, and mostly local -- for four panels this year. They include: "Fifty Shades of Blush: The Reverberations of
Fifty Shades of Grey in Bedrooms, Book Clubs and Mainstream Fiction"; "Hermoine vs Lisbeth: Brains, Brawn and the Modern Heroine"; "Mining Your Life" (about turning our lives into fiction and memoir) and a repeat of last year's very popular "Getting Published, Staying Published."
"Most readers are women," Cready says. "They are the heart and soul of the literary world …"
Although the focus is women's writing, the authors in attendance range across many genres, from memoir and mystery to romance, literary fiction, young adult and children's books, self-help and historical fiction.
"What genres of the book world
don't women read?" says Cready. "Maybe military suspense. We're pretty open."
"Women's fiction?" adds Mileti, pondering what defines her own genre. "Often there is an element of romance, but really the focus of the story is the difficulties of the heroine as she faces personal challenges." The Harry Potter vs. Millennium Trilogy panel is intended to assess the place of the heroine in today's fiction.
"We intend to keep on doing this," concludes Cready. "We would love to see it grow and grow and draw more and more authors and more and more attendees from other states."
Writer:
Marty Levine
Sources: Gwyn Cready and Meredith Mileti, Women Read/Women Write Book Festival