Boston Book Festival

Creativity and innovation are among the most overused buzzwords in circulation today.  But let’s face it: some people truly are more creative and able to innovate. Why? Alexa Clay, coauthor of The Misfit Economy, asserts that we can learn a lot about creativity from observing drug runners, computer hackers, con artists, Amish entrepreneurs and other outsiders and outcasts. In Inventology, Pagan Kennedy explores some characteristics of the highly inventive and outlines four main paths to discovery. Do you have what it takes to be creative? Find out and learn some tricks of the trade in this creative and innovative session moderated by BBF Fellow and digital reporter at WBUR, Zeninjor Enwemeka.

This session features three takes on the artistic expression of experience. Sarah Lewis, who guest curated an amazing special issue of Aperture magazine entitled Vision & Justice, explores black experience as depicted by black photographers in arresting images that capture both injustice and humanity. Experience: Culture, Cognition, and the Common Sense, edited by Caroline Jones and Rebecca Uchill, offers a reading experience like no other: a heat-sensitive cover by Olafur Eliasson, endpapers that contain human pheromones, colorful margins and edges. The physical book produces experience while functioning as a container of ideas around cultural and sensory realms of experience. Artist Clifford Ross works to reconcile realism (he invented a super-high-resolution camera) and abstraction in his representations of nature. His books, Seen & Imagined and Hurricane Waves, offer augmented reality and virtual reality experiences through a free downloadable app. A highly visual session covering a spectacular range of experience will be hosted by art historian Robert Wiesenberger.

 

What’s in your handbag? If you’re Grandmother Zofia, it could be literally the entire world. That’s the premise of Kelly Link’s charming, evocative, and just slightly sinister story “The Faery Handbag,” which is this year’s One City One Story selection. Come discuss the story’s themes of family history, secrets, everyday magic, and belief in the unknown with other Boston-area readers, and with Link herself. Inside Arts editor and facilitator extraordinaire Alicia Anstead will lead the discussion; tweet her your questions and thoughts ahead of time at @1city1story! Haven’t picked up your copy of the story yet? Swing by the BBF info tent to pick one up—they’re the perfect size to slip into a pocket or, yes, a handbag. Sponsored by BookBub.