www.lasvegassun.com: In its eighth year the Vegas Valley Book Festival is plucking from local waters for most of the five-day festival that begins today in downtown Las Vegas.

Some speakers and panelists are flying in from out of town. The rest are residents, some of whom belong to UNLV’s esteemed literary programs. That includes award-winning author E.L. Doctorow, the UNLV Elias Ghanem chair in creative writing, who is a keynote speaker and will read from and discuss his works.

Here is a sampling of who’s participating:

1. UNLV

Douglas Unger, who co-founded the MFA in Creative Writing International program and Schaeffer Ph.D. with Creative Dissertation, is one of three writers telling stories about Las Vegas in “City of Second Chances.” His works include “Leaving the Land,” a finalist for the Pulitzer and Robert F. Kennedy awards, and “Looking for War and Other Stories.”

2. Valley voices

The wide range of nonacademic writers includes Geoff Schumacher (“Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue” and “Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas”) and playwright Brian Kral, whose more than 20 works include a play about the bombing of Hiroshima, “Paper Lanterns, Paper Cranes.”

3. Spoken

Poetry and performance will meet First Friday in “The Sin City Sonneteer Spectacle.” Local writers will climb aboard a trolley that stops for readings at downtown locations. Haiku with Mayor Oscar Goodman will kick it off. Writers, performers and poets will include Revell, Dayvid Figler, Jeff Grindley, Elizabeth Quiñones-Zaldaña and Keith Brantley. Brantley is host of the West Las Vegas Arts Center’s long-running Poets Corner and member of the Westside Poets, Izulu Poets and Griot Nation. Jarret Keene (“Monster Fashion” and “A Boy’s Guide to Arson”) and Keelan will host.

More here

It’s so great to have events for writers, I’d feel like a kid in Disneyland 🙂 What do you think of this event? Las Vegas readers, will you assist?