Welcome 

Pages & Places, Scranton's inaugural book festival, will bring to the city’s downtown 30 writers, scholars, and editors, nearly all of them bearing significant national reputations. Some have won MacArthur “Genius” Fellowships, NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, and major literary awards. On Saturday, October 3rd they will convene nine panels and workshops on subjects ranging from green living to the state of our national poetry to Scranton’s role in the 2008 Presidential election.

The festival’s nine panels and workshops will be held in nine of the city’s most impressive venues—an integration of literature and architecture that distinguishes Pages & Places from any other book festival in the country. Each venue has been chosen for its unique contribution to the literary experience: the festival’s environmental workshop will be held in the new eco-boutique, GreenBeing; our panel of Women Noir Novelists will be held on the creaky second floor of The Banshee; the independent publishers’ panel will be held in the Hotel Casey's old laundry building, now home to Anthology Books.

Indeed, Pages & Places celebrates Scranton as fully as it celebrates books.

The primary mission of the Pages & Places Book Festival is to promote books, reading, writing, and literacy. Moreover, Pages & Places is meant to demonstrate—in fact to serve as an example of—the economy-generating capacity of arts and culture.

For Scranton, this festival is timely. Over the past eight years, downtown Scranton has come alive again: new businesses, independent boutiques, diverse dining, architectural renovation, and beautiful residential apartments. Building on these hopeful trends, our featured Urban Economy panel will introduce leading edge ideas for capitalizing on Scranton’s recent success and creating a truly dynamic urban economy. Four of the nation’s leading thinkers on the development of downtown economies will introduce Scranton to the most productive urban planning of the past decade and help put us on the path toward greater competitiveness in the global market.

In the 21st century great cities have built booms on thriving arts and culture scenes that, in turn, attract the best and the brightest and the businesses that want them. You might even think of Pages & Places as the latest great contribution to Scranton’s Creative Class future.

Come enjoy the festival and the best that downtown Scranton has to offer.