(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Lydia Davis, the winner of this year’s Man Booker International Prize awarded for “an achievement in fiction on the world stage,” is one of more than a dozen authors who will be featured in the annual CCCA ArtsWalk Literary Festival to be held Friday through Sunday, October 4-6, 2013. The festival will present back-to-back readings by more than a dozen nationally known and local writers. The authors are part of the annual Columbia County Council of the Arts ArtsWalk.

A goal of this year’s literary festival was to offer audiences “what’s new in the written word” currently. That’s “e-lit – in particular the digital novel and sound poetry,” said curator Lee Gould. Excerpts from two digital novels will be presented: Tiny Drops, a new tragic-comic multimedia text about a Japanese housewife kidnapped by North Korean frogmen to teach an operative in Pyongyang how to “be” Japanese, by Illya Szilak; and Luminous Airplanes, a large, web-based “hyperromance” by Paul LaFarge.

Poet Tracie Morris, who recently taught a course at the Millay Colony, will perform sound poems, a theatrical presentation that blends music, drama and poetry, from her poetry with CD collection Rhyme Scheme.

For the first time, the ArtsWalk Literary Festival will feature spoken-word poetry, the staple of slams and hailed as “the democratization of verse” for giving voice to artists typically sidelined, especially youth, people of color, women, and LGBT persons. Because of its edgy musical qualities, its whip-smart social commentary and lively performances, spoken word boasts a large, enthusiastic and diverse following. On Sunday afternoon, Mahogany Browne, curator of the Nuyorican Café’s Friday night slam series and author of SWAG, and Adam Falkner, author of Ten for Fakeem and founder/director of the Dialogue Arts Project, an organization that uses the arts as a means of generating cross-cultural communication, will perform.

 

Lydia Davis will share the Hudson Opera House stage with novelist James Lasdun, who recently published Give Me Everything You Have – On Being Stalked, a chronicle of the author’s harrowing ordeal at the hands of a former student, a memoir that is compassionate and self-revealing rather than accusing.

Rebecca Wolff, poet, fiction writer, and the editor and creator of both Fence Magazine and Fence Books, will present poems from her new collection One Morning, joining Greg Hrbek who will read from Destroy All Monsters, winner of the Prairie Schooner Prize for Fiction. Hrbek’s riveting short stories, in unexpected, sometimes surreal ways, are grounded in today’s social issues.

Novelist Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya will present The Watch, Aeschylus’ tragedy Antigone transplanted to a US army outpost in Afghanistan, where he spent much time interviewing enlisted men and officers. Poet Cara Benson will read from her new collection Funny Considering how heated it was, and Djelloul Marbrook, author of three poetry collections and four novels, from his outsider novel Guest Boy.

“Here Now,” a reading of new work by local writers hosted by music critic and poet Karen Schoemer, will open the festival on Friday evening, October 4, at Spotty Dog Books & Ale. Readings on October 5 and 6 take place from noon to 5p.m. at the Hudson Opera House. Readings are followed by Q&A and book signings. All events are free.