2010 Festival of the Book to include Emmy winner

Which 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book speaker picked up an Emmy Award for writing for the daytime drama “One Life to Live,” and how can you get your hands on tickets to hear him speak at a luncheon?

For the answers to these and many other questions, tune in tomorrow. That’s because tickets go on sale for the 16th annual festival at 9 a.m. Thursday on the festival’s Web site at http://www.vabook.org.

On Tuesday, organizers announced three major speakers who will be attending the festival, which is set for March 17 through 21 in a variety of Charlottesville locations.

Michael Malone will speak at the luncheon at 11:45 a.m. March 18 at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel. The New York Times bestselling author has 10 novels, a short-story collection and two nonfiction works to his credit, plus his Emmy, an Edgar Award and an O. Henry Award.

Malone teaches at Duke University, and most of his works revolve around people in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. His latest novel is “Four Corners of the Sky,” which melds crime, a family tale and a coming-of-age story into a single work.

Nancy Coble Damon, program director of the festival, said Malone “is fantastic. His writing is funny.”

She said that people who aren’t familiar with Malone’s work will enjoy his satirical writing and beimpressed by his versatility.

“His range is a very wide range,” Damon said.

Tickets for the luncheon are $50.

The speaker for the Crime Wave luncheon has a way of creating complex protagonists, and it’s tempting to think that she draws on her own skills at multitasking to do so.

Julia Spencer-Fleming is a lawyer-turned-mystery writer. She picked up Agatha, Anthony and Macavity awards for best first mystery novel for her first novel, “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

“Once Was a Soldier,” her seventh novel, will be out in the spring. The protagonist is a former Army helicopter pilot now serving as the first woman Episcopalian priest in a small Upstate New York town.

Tickets for the Crime Wave luncheon, which begins at noon March 20 at the Omni, are $50.

Michael Gelb will speak on “Creativity in Tough Times” at the annual Business Breakfast, which starts at 7:30 a.m. March 17, also at the Omni.

Gelb has been a fellow at the Batten Institute at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration since 2003. He’s the author of “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci” and “Innovate Like Edison,” among other works.

Thinking creatively isn’t just something Gelb writes about. He shared stages with the Rolling Stones back in the 1970s — as a juggler.

Tickets to the Business Breakfast will be $30 through Feb. 28, and tables of 10 are $350.

Most festival events are free, and the Web site will offer book lovers a convenient way to keep track of upcoming panels, talks and other attractions and map out visits to multiple events. Ticket sales will be handled exclusively through the Web site.

When ordering tickets online, have your e-mail, mailing address and credit card information handy. Popular events have sold out within hours in past years.