- Deborah Porter
-
Deborah Z. Porter 
Born 1958
Cleveland, Ohio, USAResidence Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Nationality American Occupation critic, executive director Deborah Z. Porter (born 1958) is non-profit director best known for founding the Boston Book Festival, which she has run since 2009. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Contents
Life and work
Porter was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Brandeis University in 1980, and founded a non-profit to match students with meaningful internships. Later she pursued her love of books, getting an MA in Children's Literature, and writing as a critic for Kirkus Reviews, Ruminator Review, and WBUR.[1]
Book festival and reading campaigns
In 2006, Porter looked into starting a Boston-area book festival, as none had been held in Boston since the Boston Globe Book Festival had been discontinued.[1][2] In 2009 she founded a non-profit, the Boston Book Festival, to run such an event each year. The first festival was held that October in Copley Square, drawing over 10,000 attendees and a positive response from the speakers. The festival grew to 25,000 attendees and over 100 presenters each year, including a number of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize–winning authors.[3][4]
In 2010, Porter started the "One City One Story" project in Boston, to encourage everyone in the city to read the same story and discuss it together.[5] Unlike other city-wide reading projects, this project gave away 30,000 copies of the selected story to city residents, organizing large-group discussions involving hundreds of people.[6] This is now an annual event.[7]
External links
- Interview with Kerry Skemp, Bostonist, from 2009
- Porter on Twitter
References
- ^ a b "Against all odds". Boston Globe. October 10, 2010. http://articles.boston.com/2010-10-10/ae/29302509_1_readings-robert-pinsky-authors. Retrieved June 27, 2011.
- ^ The Boston Globe Book Festival held its 36th and last annual festival in 2003. An announcement for the 36th annual BGBF notes that it was one of the longest running festivals of its kind.
- ^ Boston Book Festival keeps growing. Boston Globe. October 18, 2010. Retrieved Jun 29, 2011.
- ^ "2011 update". Boston Book Festival. April 19, 2011. http://www.ashmontmedia.com/releases/BBF_2011_prizewinners.pdf. Retrieved June 29, 2011.
- ^ Hosted at 1c1sboston.org. Retrieved June 29, 2011
- ^ "One City One Story". the things they read. October 8, 2010. http://thethingstheyread.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/one-city-one-story/. Retrieved June 29, 2011.
- ^ The 2011 selection is Richard Russo's The Whore's Child.
"Russo work chosen for Boston Book Festival's One Story program". Boston Globe. June 21, 2010. http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-21/ae/29684191_1_story-program-short-story-library-branches. Retrieved June 27, 2011.
Categories:- American literary critics
- People from Cambridge, Massachusetts
- People from Cleveland, Ohio
- Brandeis University alumni
- 1958 births
- Living people
- American writer stubs
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