AJC Decatur Book Fest announces full schedule

The final schedule for the AJC Decatur Book Festival, featuring keynote speaker Kenny Leon, has been released and it’s way more than one person -- or even 20 people -- can do in one Labor Day weekend.

More than 300 writers, poets, speakers, chefs and personalities will appear at events centered on the square in downtown Decatur Aug. 31-Sept. 2.

The schedule is available at the book festival’s website.

Leon, an Atlanta theater legend and a director of stage, screen and television productions, will speak at the kickoff event, 8 p.m. Aug. 31, at the Schwartz Center at Emory University.

Leon is the author of the new memoir, “Take You Wherever You Go.”

Armistead Maupin, a Southern-born chronicler of social mores, and author of “Tales of the City,” will also appear at the festival.

Among the authors who will be featured are: 

 - Journalist Beth Macy, and her account “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America,” which charts the opioid crisis in America. 

- Novelist Karin Slaughter, and her crime thriller “Pieces of Her.” 

 - “Visible Empire” author Hannah Pittard, who uses the historical events of the Orly Air Crash of 1962 to explore the promise and hope that remains in the wake of crisis.

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This is the book festival’s 13th year. Held every Labor Day weekend, the festival attracts tens of thousands of readers to three days of readings, panels, parades, music and other events.

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AJC Calendar: Literary and book events