411 on NPR Coming to HPHS

Radio journalist Scott Simon, a familiar voice to diehard National Public Radio listeners like myself, is this year’s keynote speaker at the Highland Park Literary Festival. I went to see Michael Chabon when he was the headliner there a few years ago. HPHS does a great job of hosting the event.

The festival will include lots of other activities, many aimed at the students alone, Nov. 13-14. Our own Glenn Arbery has participated in leading a workshop for the kids in the past. But the public is invited to Simon’s speech at 7 p.m. Nov. 14. For details,

The 12th Annual HP Literary Festival will be November 13 and 14, with keynote speaker Scott Simon addressing students in the morning and speaking to the community at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 13. This special event in the large auditorium at Highland Park High School, 4220 Emerson, is free and open to the public. The popular host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday and a Peabody Award-winning radio journalist, Mr. Simon has reported on the major events and the most interesting people of our time. His books include the acclaimed Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, and Pretty Birds, the novel based on teenaged girls during the siege of Sarajevo.

The goal of the Highland Park Literary Festival, Write Here~Write Now, is to inspire and encourage students to celebrate language in its artfully written, spoken and sung formats.   The festival will offer special student assemblies with noted speakers and almost 100 small group workshops connecting HPHS students with novelists, journalists, poets, storytellers, playwrights, screenwriters, and songwriters.  Students perform their own works for each other at a student-run Open Mic night and submit their works to a creative writing contest.

The literary week at HPHS will continue with the annual Classics Series, student performances of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors at 7 pm in the auditorium Nov 15-17 and Nov. 18 at 2 pm.

For more information, visit www.hplitfest.org. The Literary Festival is made possible by grants and donations from La Fiesta de las Seis Banderas, the HPHS PTA, HP Arts and HPISD families