“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” So said the Russian-born US Poet Laureate Joseph Brodsky.

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Keeping us all from an evil worse than volume-immolation, next weekend’s sixth annual Boston Book Festival (BBF), New England’s biggest literary event, will attract more than 25,000 people to Copley Square on Oct. 25 for twelve hours of free book-promoting events.

“We’re thrilled to have so many wonderful authors joining the festival,” says BBF Founder/Executive Director Deborah Porter. “This year’s festival features a vast array of keynote speakers, presenters, and topics in areas of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s literature.”

Among the 2014 keynoters are the Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, the jazz giant Herbie Hancock, the novelist Susan Minot, and the Pritzker-winning architect Norman Foster.

BBF’s programming caters to everyone from preschoolers to post-doc scholars. Events will include presentations and panels featuring 200 internationally known best-selling writers, critics, and journalists and sessions for children, teens, and families featuring puppet shows and story-telling. There will be writing workshops and competitions plus spoken word and music performances. At the Copley Square Street Fair, exhibitors will hawk rare tomes, indie publications, and periodicals. Berklee College of Music will provide live music for the fair all day long.

Because of ongoing renovations, none of the Copley Square Library spaces will be available for event. This situation has necessitated expanding the BBF perimeter farther out from the center of Copley Square to previously unused venues. Another new wrinkle: The French Library in Boston will for the first time host a series of talks about modern French authors.

All daytime panel events are free, but most require First Night-style waiting in line for limited seating. Scheduled session topics range from local to cosmic. For example, close-to-home types may opt for “Boston Stories: Tears, Triumphs, Mysteries and Sports” or “Sports Writing: Local Heroes” or “Poets in the Asylum,” about famous writers who were treated at McLean Hospital.

The Kids’ Keynote speaker, Rick Reardon, is the bestselling Young Adult author who now lives here in Boston. A great favorite of middle school boys, Reardon just released his “The Blood of Olympus,” the latest Percy Jackson, one of several of his successful series that pits modern-day teen descendants of mythological heroes against supernatural foes. At the Character Connection tent, beginning readers can take selfies with their picture-book faves like Corduroy, Llama Llama, Curious George, Stellaluna, and Pete the Cat.

Each year, BBF’s One City One Story (1C1S) initiative disseminates free copies of a short story throughout greater Boston, culminating in a town hall discussion with the author (2 p.m.-3 p.m., Boston Common Hancock). This year’s selection, “Sublimation,” by award-winning Boston author Jennifer Haigh, appeared in the spring 2014 edition of Ploughshares, the award-winning literary magazine published by Emerson College. “Sublimation” explores the intergenerational dynamics of one family as members tackle topics of gender nonconformity, emotional connection, and the existential crises that accompany aging.

1C1S is sponsored by Dunkin’ Donuts and Zipcar, allowing for 30,000 copies of the story, in both English and Spanish, to be printed by the BBF and distributed free of charge at the BPL and its branches, and at various MBTA stations.

Dot residents still have time to be part of 1C1S. Copies of “Sublimation” are at all Dot branch libraries, at the Dot to Dot Café and at several Fields Corner eateries. The story is also available for download in English, Vietnamese, Russian, Mandarin, and Portuguese.
To download Haigh’s story, or simply to browse through all the BBF options, go to bostonbookfest.org.