Nw Bookfest Draws 23,000 Book Lovers

Northwest Bookfest sailed through its third year in Seattle last weekend with 23,000 writers, wanna-be writers and book lovers going through the gates at Pier 48.

The $5 admission raised about $115,000 for regional (read Puget Sound) literacy programs.

Along with the 200 booths filled with hundreds of titles, the two-day event boasted some of the nation’s best writers. Tobias Wolff, Anita Hill, Joyce Carol Oates and Sherman Alexie drew standing-room-only crowds of several hundred.

The first awarding of the annual Chinook Literary Prize - a $10,000 advance to a Northwest writer and publication of his or winning manuscript by Sasquatch Books of Seattle - was made at the event, appropos since the prize is a joint project of Sasquatch and the Bookfest. Sherry Simpson, a journalism professor at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, was the winner from 200 entries, chosen for her essays about Alaska.

Information about the fourth Northwest Bookfest, in October 1998, will be available on the Web at www.speakeasy.org/nwbookfest. , DataTimes