There's no "downtime" for our Festival literary committee, who researches and reaches out to hundreds of authors each year in order to build a great Festival for you to enjoy. We were all disappointed that Diane Rehm was unable to join us this past June due to illness, but the good news is that she's looking forward to meeting you all at the 2017 Festival! So save the dates (June 16-18) and keep an eye open for our newsletters, where we'll continue to update you on the authors who have accepted our invitation.

How do I sign up for the NBF newsletter, you ask? Just click on the "Join Our Email List" link on our website. Newsletter subscribers get the first look at our Festival author list as well as the opportunity to purchase tickets to special events before the tickets are made available to the public. Plus we promise not to inundate you with news, nor will we share your email address with anyone.

But before we say good-bye to 2016 -- the best-attended events at our Book Festival in June were the Opening Night Celebration featuring Billy Collins and Mark Doty, and the panel of Matt Gallagher, Sebastian Junger, Emma Sky, and J. Kael Weston talking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fortunately for us all, NCTV Channel 18 was there to film the conversations. Just go to NCTV's website and search for our videos on demand.