You wouldn't expect anybody to schedule a book fair opposite BookExpo America—I wouldn't have, anyway, which is why, late last year, I accepted an invitation to speak at Pennwriters without a second thought. If you are in the Lancaster, PA, area, and not doing anything Saturday, come on down to my morning panel on bookblogging, where I'll chat with Lizzie Skurnick and Bud Parr. I'll also be conducting an early afternoon seminar on marketing yourself as a writer, based on my own experiences bringing The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane to publication and my deep enthusiasm for Seth Godin and Book Promotion 101.

New Yorkers don't need to feel they're being left out of the book festival loop, either, as the South Asian Women's Creative Collective takes over Marymount Manhattan College for "Mixed Messages," a celebration of South Asian writing that features an Amitav Ghosh reading, a screenwriting workshop with Monsoon Wedding scribe Sabrina Dhawan, and—the one event I'm sorry I'll be missing—a panel on South Asian YA and kid's literature. If the panelists don't bring it her themselves, expect some lively discussion of Kaavya Viswanathan during the Q&A period!