Montclair, NJ –Succeed2gether’s Montclair Literary Festival launched its fourth festival on Wednesday with a talk by best-selling author Isabel Allende. Her visit was part of a US tour for her new book A Long Petal of the Sea/Largo pétalo de mar.
Just under 400 people attended the lively talk, which was much more than a book discussion. A Long Petal of the Sea, which is being touted as “one of the strongest and most affecting works of her career,” follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home.
Allende chatted animatedly with her interviewer, Robyn Moreno, a Mexican-born storyteller and Emmy-nominated TV host. They talked about how Allende loves romance and her novels always have a love story; getting married for the third time in Fall 2019; living life to the fullest; using the past to forge your future; and how she established her Foundation to empower and protect women and children after a woman tried to give her a newborn baby girl in India, where, she was told, ‘no one wants girls’.
The festival’s next event is on February 6, when Malcolm Gladwell will be in conversation about his latest book “Talking with Strangers”. Tickets for this event are available bit.ly/2LoY6HH. An Evening with Colum McCann will follow on March 12 (tickets bit.ly/2YsaJar), before the festival itself begins on Wednesday, March 25. Headline authors include Erik Larson, Madeline Miller, Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn, Mo Rocca, Paul Krugman, and Susan Rice. More details of the festival can be found at succeed2gether.org/montclair-literary-festival/.
The festival is a fundraiser for Montclair-based non-profit Succeed2gether (www.succeed2gether.org), which offers after-school one-on-one tutoring and enrichment classes with the aim of closing the education opportunity gap in Essex County. In keeping with the ethos of its parent company, the majority of festival events are free to all.