Exeter LitFest welcomes Ilyon Woo, the author of one of the 10 Best Books of 2023
EXETER — The Exeter LitFest announced this week that Ilyon Woo will be its featured author for the 2024 literary festival on April 6.
Woo is the best-selling author of “Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom,” one of the New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2023” and People Magazine’s “Top Ten Books of 2023.” It was also named best book of the year by The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, Boston, Chicago Public Library and Oprah Daily.
Time Magazine called “Master Slave Husband Wife” an “edge-of-your-seat drama.” The Wall Street Journal pronounced it: “A narrative of such courage and resourcefulness it seems too dashing to be true… a 'genuine nail-biter.'”
A finalist for a Kirkus Prize, the book was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards, and supported by a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Writing Grant.
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Woo is also the author of “The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times.” Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and The New York Times, and she has received support for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Antiquarian Society, among other institutions.
She has traveled the country to speak at bookstores, museums, schools, and book festivals, and she has been featured on such programs as “NPR’s Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered,” and “CBS Sunday Morning.” She holds a BA in the humanities from Yale College and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University, where she first came upon the story of William and Ellen Craft.
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The Exeter LitFest aims to shine a spotlight on the wealth of local talent in the Exeter area as well as bringing in featured authors and poets from the region. Events at the literary festival, held in the historic Exeter Town Hall, are always free and open to all.
Held for the first time in 2019, the Exeter LitFest is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that hosts an annual event the first weekend of April. The inaugural festival included a keynote by “Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown, as well as events with Joe Hill, Brendan Dubois, and NH Teen Poet Laureate Cate Dixon.
For updates on the 2024 Exeter LitFest, including the schedule, follow Exeter LitFest on Facebook and Instagram or visit www.exeterlitfest.com.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Exeter LitFest announces Ilyon Woo as featured author for 2024
