News in Brief
By Natasha Altamirano | February 14, 2003Book festival to incorporate new features Next month's ninth annual Virginia Festival of the Book will have some new features this year, including a larger focus on crime and science fiction novels, according to event organizers. Among other changes, publishing day will be free of charge and open to the public, and aspiring authors will have a chance to enter unpublished manuscripts in the Great American Novel Contest. Crime novelist John Grisham, an Albemarle County resident, and author Earl Hamner Jr., a Nelson County native, are scheduled to appear alongside keynote speaker and author Lee Smith. Other authors scheduled to speak include poets Nikki Giovanni and Rita Dove.