The Moving Finger is a new talk-piece about literature, empathy, and collective forgetting in the age of blogs, written by Richard Powers, and performed by Richard Powers and John Leonard. The performance will be followed by a public conversation with Powers and Leonard.  

Tickets: $10 members; $15 nonmembers
Online ticketing: Visit www.themorgan.org
Box Office Telephone: Call 212.685.0008, ext. 560 to charge your order

eNewsletter subscribers can receive the member's price of $10.00 if they identify themselves by phone as a National Book Foundation eNewsletter subscriber when calling the box office. For on-line ticketing, go through the process as if a member. There is no need to enter any member/subscription num.

Richard Powers, the 2006 National Book Award Fiction Winner for The Echo Maker, will read from new work, and engage in a public conversation with writer and critic John Leonard. Powers has been widely acclaimed as one of the most important novelists of his generation. He is the author of nine novels, including Operation Wandering Soul, which was a National Book Award Finalist in 1993. He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. He holds a Swanlund endowed chair and residence at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois.

John Leonard recently received the Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle. He is currently the book critic for Harper's Magazine, the television critic for New York magazine, and a freelance reviewer for The New York Review of Books. A former commentator on CBS Sunday Morning, book critic for The Nation, and editor of The New York Times Book Review, Leonard is the author of 11 books.

At the festival, Timothy Egan, the 2006 National Book Award Nonfiction Winner for The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, and Jess Walter, a 2006 National Book Award Fiction Finalist for The Zero, will appear together in a panel discussion titled “Off the Record, A Conversation.”

Alberto Rios, a 2002 National Book Award Poetry Finalist for The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body, will facilitate a writing workshop.

For more information about Get Lit! visit www.ewu.edu/getlit/index.html

At the Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45^th Street, NYC. For tickets and information, call 212-239-6200.

Acclaimed Young Adult novelist Rita Williams-Garcia recently completed a week-long residency at the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center. This month, the Foundation is pleased to welcome poet Roger Bonair-Agard to its roster of writers in our residency program. Roger will work with high school age students at the Monroe Campus Schools in the Bronx. A legend in the "slam" scene and a Cave Canem fellow, Roger recently published his first collection of poetry, Tarnish & Masquerade, (Cypher : Rattapallax).

May 10, An Evening with National Book Award Winner Richard Powers and author John Leonard at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

May 31 - June 3, Visit the National Book Foundation at BookExpo, Booth #1342 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

April 16, National Book Awards Guidelines and Entry forms mailed to publishers

June 15, Entry form deadline

August 15, Book submission deadline

October 10, Announcement of this year's National Book Award Finalists

November 12, National Book Awards Week Begins with 5 Under 35

November 13, National Book Awards Teen Press Conference

November 13, National Book Awards Finalist Reading

November 14, 58^th National Book Awards