VaBook10: Short Takes 2

On the second day of the 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book, I was not able to get to as many programs as I planned -- a situation I hope to balance out on Day Three.  With some 300 authors divided up among several venues, it's nearly impossible to get more than a taste of the Festival's many offerings.

Fortunately, I was able to grab two authors and the Festival's program director for short interviews.

Program director Nancy Damon attended a session in Charlottesville City Council Chambers called "Gangs, Schools and the Great American Dream," which was marred by the absence of one of the scheduled authors, Samuel Logan, whose book, This is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America's Most Violent Gang, accounted for the first word in the program's title. I asked her to comment on the 2010 Festival so far:

At that same program, emeritus professor of education at the University of Virginia James M. Kauffmantalked about his most recent book, The Tragicomedy of Public Education, which is so new, he said, that it does not yet appear on the publisher's web site -- nor, it seems, is it yet available on Amazon.com. (Look for it there soon; as you can see from the video, the book is in print and ready to read.)

Earlier in the evening, Escafe restaurant (on the other end of Charlottesville's downtown mall) hosted a reading and remarks by Robert Leleux, author of The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, which is about his growing up gay in East Texas and -- he says -- is a comical look at his parents' divorce.

Look for more "short takes" tomorrow, and perhaps some longer-form video reports, as well.