About Reading (2009): Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.

Louise Steinman has curated the award-winning ALOUD literary series at the Los Angeles Public Library for more than 14 years. She is also the author of The Knowing Body: The Artist as Storyteller in Contemporary Performance and The Souvenir, a memoir of her father.

Laura Miller is a cofounder of Salon.com, where she is currently a staff writer, and a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review. Her work has appeared in many esteemed publications. Miller is the author of The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia.

Sara Nelson is the former editor-in-chief at Publisher's Weekly and is currently a freelance journalist contributing to TheWrap.com and the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading.

Lizzie Skurnick is a book critic on NPR and her reviews and essays have appeared in an array of publications. Her columns have been published as a book, Shelf Discover: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading. Skurnick writes a column on vintage fiction for Jezebel magazine.

Jane Smiley is the author of more than 10 novels and four works of nonfiction. She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and in 2001 was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Smiley's latest novel is Ten Days in the Hills.