A Best-Seller -- Northwest Bookfest Keeps Climbing The Charts

It's something to contemplate, how the Northwest Bookfest, now in its fourth year, has come into full flower. The festival's popularity makes you realize that, all the fulminating to the contrary, people still love to read.

The Bookfest - a festival of books, reading and writing for people of all ages - has matured into a destination point for nationally known authors and a showcase for regional ones. It's also become an attraction for people interested in everything from gardening to cooking, sex to health care, photography to antiques.

This year's Bookfest, Saturday and Sunday at Pier 48 on the Seattle waterfront, will feature more authors than ever before - 250 compared with last year's 175. Writers will participate in a range of readings, panel discussions and autograph sessions. The festival also features about 200 exhibitors, including publisher, bookseller and merchandise booths.

Expanded corporate and business sponsorship has enabled the event to continue to cover expenses - all donations at the door go to literacy programs throughout the Northwest (the event is free, but a $5 donation at the door is suggested).

Some sponsors, such as US West and Attachmate, are new; others, including Washington Mutual, Starbucks and Barnes & Noble, have increased their support. The Seattle Times is the principal sponsor. Other media sponsors include KPLU and KUOW public radio and KING-TV. Seattle Mayor Paul Schell and Washington first lady Mona Lee Locke are honorary chairs of the event.

Says Bookfest executive director Kris Molesworth: "The thing that makes Bookfest unique is that it has a really rich blend of national and international headliners," many of whom kick off their fall book tours at the Bookfest, "and regional authors who appear out of the goodness of their literary hearts. We don't pay authors to appear at Bookfest. They believe in what we do."

Besides featuring nationally known authors such as Paul Theroux, Arthur Golden, Susan Isaacs, Dave Barry and Pam Houston, the Bookfest this year will host our own state's Governor's Writers' Awards. At noon Sunday, a two-hour program will introduce the winners and offer them a venue for reading from their work.

This year's festival features a strong stable of Northwest-based writers, and authors who write about the Northwest. Barry Lopez, Hilary Stewart, Timothy Egan and Bruce Barcott are some of the authors who qualify in both categories. They will appear on panels devoted to writing about nature and humanity's imprint, for good or ill, on it. Another panel is devoted entirely to "Northwest Noir: The Pacific Northwest as Setting." Several regional publishers have signed on as sponsors - in addition to perennial sponsor Sasquatch Books, new publishing sponsors are Graphic Arts Center (Portland), Mountaineers Books, and the University of Washington Press.

The two-day gathering is also a boon to writers and would-be writers - there are panels and workshops on everything from the art of the chapbook to online intellectual-property issues to screenwriting. Here's one sure to attract a crowd: "Making Editors Beg for Your Work," featuring James B. Stewart, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of "Blood Sport," a groundbreaking book on the troubles of President Clinton. On Sunday, writer Brenda Peterson, editor Gary Luke and literary agent Elizabeth Wales will explain how the writer-agent-editor connection works.

On the following page is a sample of Bookfest presentations. For more information, see the official program inside.

HIGHLIGHTS SATURDAY -- Phil Borges and Natalie Fobes, two local photographers with books to their credit, discuss "The Power of Photography: Culture through Pictures" (10:15 a.m., William Stafford stage). -- Arthur Golden, author of the best-selling "Memoirs of a Geisha," will tell festivalgoers how he entered the world of the geisha (10:30 a.m., Richard Hugo stage). -- Dave Barry discusses the implications of turning 50, the subject of his new book, "Dave Barry Turns 50" (noon, Hugo Stage). Interviewed by John Curley of KING-TV's "Evening Magazine." -- Lawrence Block and S.J. Rozan, two of American's favorite mystery writers, talk about their hometown, New York City, as a key element in their books. Block, the author of "Everybody Dies," and Rozan, author of "A Bitter Feast," will discuss the city and its influence with Nancy Pearl, executive director of the Washington Center for the Book (noon, Norman Maclean Stage). -- Maria Rodale and Anne Lovejoy, two garden writers of renown, will talk about, what else, gardening (noon, Raymond Carver Stage). -- Andre Alexis and Shani Mooto discuss how they looked to the past to illuminate the present in their works. Alexis is the author of "Childhood," Mooto of "Cereus Blooms at Night" (1:15 p.m., Hazel Hall Stage). -- Robert MacNeil and Gerry Spence will speak on corporate culture versus the individual. MacNeil is the former co-anchor of PBS's "MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour" and the author of the just-released "Breaking News;" Spence is a nationally known trial lawyer (1:30 p.m., Hugo Stage). -- Ursula K. Le Guin will head a panel discussion on why women are still underrepresented in winning literary grants and awards and getting their books reviewed (2:45 p.m., Maclean Stage). -- Pam Houston, author of "Cowboys are my Weakness" and "Waltzing the Cat," will introduce listeners to Lucy O'Rourke, a character in "Waltzing," a "thrill-seeking photographer with oddball luck in love" (3 p.m., Hugo Stage). -- This Old Book will surely be a hit with followers of the PBS program "Antique Roadshow." Antiquarian book dealers and auction specialists will tell you what makes a book valuable. Following the presentation, they'll decamp to the Antiquarian Room - you can bring in that special book you've always wondered about and get an expert opinion on its value (4 p.m., Mary McCarthy Stage). -- Jim Lehrer, William Dietrich and William McCauley will discuss how power, corruption and intrigue mix up to make a novel. Lehrer is the host of PBS's "NewsHour" and author of "Purple Dots"; Dietrich, a former Pultizer Prize-winning Seattle Times reporter, has a new novel, "Ice Reich," about Nazis in Antarctica; and McCauley is a local writer with a new novel about Africa, "The Turning Over" (4:15 p.m., Maclean Stage). -- Paul Theroux will talk with Jonathan Raban about his controversial memoir of his former friendship with writer V.S. Naipaul, "Sir Vidia's Shadow" (4:30 p.m., Hugo Stage).

SUNDAY -- Susan Isaacs, author of "Compromising Positions," kicks off Sunday's offerings with a talk about how she came to write her new novel, "Red, White and Blue." It's about a Wyoming-born FBI agent and a New York Jewish journalist who discover, while investigating an anti-Semitic terrorist group, that they have a common ancestor (10:30 a.m., Hugo Stage). -- This Old Book makes a repeat appearance; see Saturday (noon, McCarthy Stage). -- Anne Fadiman, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," about a Hmong family's struggles with Western medicine, reads from "Ex Libris," a collection of essays on her lifelong love of reading (1:30 p.m., McCarthy Stage). -- People, Wildlife, Landscapes: Barry Lopez, Hilary Stewart and Sherry Simpson, three acclaimed Northwest writers, talk about how they write about and observe nature (2:30 p.m., Hugo Stage). -- Science and Religion: Hand-in-Hand or Worlds Apart? Timothy Ferris, author of "The Whole Shebang," and Edward Larson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Summer for the Gods," focus on the origins of the universe and humanity . . . and related topics (2:45 p.m., Stafford Stage). -- Sherman Alexie and Greg Sarris. Alexie and Sarris, an English professor at UCLA, are both Native Americans (Alexie is a Spokane Indian, and Sarris is chairman of California's Federated Coast Miwock tribe), and both are novelists with screen adaptations of their work to their credit. Alexie will read from his poems; Sarris reads from his new novel, "Watermelon Nights" (3 p.m., Maclean Stage). -- Rebecca Brown, author of "The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary," discusses the writer's life with Matthew Stadler, arts writer for The Stranger.