The 2000 edition of Calvin College's Festival of Faith & Writing, slated to run March 30-April 1, promises to be another grand celebration of words and wisdom. 
The biennial event at Calvin brings together writers, readers and publishers for three days of workshops, lectures, networking, listening and learning. It is unlike any other literary festival around. The event will bring 1,600 registrants to campus and was sold out two months ahead of time. Why? 
Keynote addresses by Chaim Potok, Anne Lamott and Maya Angelou are just part of the reason. Those lectures all will be held in the Calvin Fieldhouse and are open to members of the general public not registered for the Festival. Tickets are $15 per lecture for adults, $8 for students with ID or $40 for all three lectures. Also open to the general public will be a Saturday, April 1 talk by Walter Wangerin, Jr., speaking at 10:45 a.m., and an interview with Anne Lamott at 1:15 p.m. Those also will be $15 for adults or $8 for students. 
Festival workshops will be led by such noteables as Ashley Bryan, Clyde Edgerton, Barry Moser, Luci Shaw, Frederick and Patricia McKissack, Walter Wangerin, Jr. and Jane Yolen. Christian songwriter Charlie Peacock will be on hand as will filmmaker Paul Schrader, a Calvin alum. Editors from such publishers as Algonquin, Baker, Clarion/Houghton Mifflin, Eerdmans, Random House, Word, WW Norton and Zondervan will be on hand, looking to connect with writers, In fact, a number of past participants have gotten published as a result of meetings at the Festival. 
Rounding things out will be some 1,500 registrants, coming from, literally, all corners of the continent. The conference is directed by Calvin professor of English Dale Brown (above), author of a book titled "Of Fiction and Faith," a series of Q&A interviews with writers who work from a faith-based perspective, although they often are not explicitly Christian writers. 
The first Festival took place in 1991 with about 300 attendees. In 1994 the second festival took place and about 350 registrants were on hand. The ante was raised -- considerably -- in 1996. Annie Dillard, Madeleine L'Engle and Donald Hall formed a powerful trio and about 1,000 registrants came to Calvin's campus. In 1998 the combination of John Updike, Elie Wiesel and Katherine Paterson led to 1,300 registrants with hundreds turned away. 
And now, of course, come 2000 with 1,500 attendees expected and many, again, turned away because of lack of space. Brown notes that the Festival is a break-even event for Calvin. At $125 the conference fee is a bargain. And students, of whom there are many, pay just $65. In fact, in 1998 there were about 350 students among the 1,300 registrants, including about 200 Calvin students. Who says GenX doesn't read! 
Students also play a key role in shaping the Festival. Each year a large student committee is "critical," says Brown, "in putting the Festival together." Brown says it's important to note that Calvin calls this event a "festival." 
He says: "That's a key word for us. There's really nothing like this in the literary world. We have academics, writers, students, publishers -- lots and lots of people under a very big tent. This is the truck pull of literary studies. We intentionally say 'let's celebrate words from all kinds of directions.' Let's get everybody that has anything to do with this (writing) under one tent." 
Criteria for selecting Festival participants are pretty simple. "We're interested," Brown says, "in writers that show respect for and understanding of a faith tradition. Some of them (the writers) may, in fact, have left that tradition, but they're still reacting to it, they're aware of it and they're respectful of it." 
Brown adds that the Festival seeks writers who "take us to places we've not been before." 
He says: "Much of Christian literature leaves us where we are. Writers we bring to the Festival do not do that." Yet Brown is quick to add that the Festival is not intended to "be some wild-eyed thing where we bring in just any famous writer. We're not trying to be the People magazine of literary conferences." 
He notes that there's lots of literature written with literally no regard to faith and that sort of writing also does not fit into the Festival's mandate. "I guess," he says, "we're somewhere in the middle of that spectrum -- somewhere in between the easy-answer Christian literature and the writing that pays no mind to the role of faith in one's life. It's not an easy place to be, but it's where we at Calvin feel we should be." 
The Festival Hotline is 616-957-6770 while a website is set up at http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engl/festival.htm