Fort Myers Reading Fest has new home, big authors like Scott Turow of 'Presumed Innocent'

The Southwest Florida Reading Festival won’t be happening at Centennial Park and Harborside Event Center this year. Instead, the March 3 event is scaling down and moving to a place that makes lots of sense: The Fort Myers Regional Library in downtown Fort Myers.

The Lee County Library System organizes the popular event every year, after all. And what better place to celebrate books than a building dedicated to books?

Organizers moved the 19th-annual fest to the library because of the construction and renovation happening at Harborside Event Center, its usual home along with Centennial Park. But Jill Horrom says they’ve been talking about relocating for a while now.

“This was just an opportunity for us to get the Reading Festival back to our core services,” says Horrom, a district manager for the Lee County Library System and one of the fest’s organizers. “We want to get it back to the library and showcase what we offer.”

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The library has plenty of space, Horrom says, including its meeting rooms and the outside Cornog Plaza and amphitheater.  “Even though it seems like it’s smaller,” she says, “it’s almost the same scale.”

This year’s fest will have fewer authors — 15, compared to last year’s 21 — but that doesn’t mean organizers are cutting back on the star power.

“We wanted to really concentrate on getting big names,” Horrom says. “We really worked hard to get amazing authors.”

This year’s fest includes many best-selling and award-winning authors, including several writers of thrillers — the most popular genre at the fest. The 2018 lineup includes thriller writers J.T. Ellison (co-author of the “A Brit in the FBI” series), Alex Berenson (the John Wells series) and perhaps the biggest name in the bunch, “Presumed Innocent” author Scott Turow.

“Scott Turow: He’s kind of the guy who started it all,” Horrom says. “He paved the way for John Grisham and all of those attorney and procedural books.”

Other standouts include Patti Callahan Henry (author of character-based books such as “The Bookshop at Water’s End” and “Driftwood Summer”), kids author Suzy Kline (the Horrible Harry series), Craig Grossi (who will bring his dog Fred, featured in his true-life story “Craig & Fred: A Marine, A Stray Dog, and How They Rescued Each Other”), young-adult author Jeffrey Brown (the “Jedi Academy” and the “Darth Vader and Son” series) and historical-fiction writer Jessica Shattuck (“The Hazards of Good Breeding” and “The Women in Their Castle”).

Shattuck’s books are especially popular in Southwest Florida, Horrom says, and “The Women in Their Castle” has been featured in many local book clubs. “It’s really such a great book. I’m just thrilled that we’re getting her!”

The free festival takes place 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 3, and features book signings, meet-and-greets, author talks, readings, kids activities and more. There's also the Evening with the Authors, a March 2 kick-off event where fans can mingle with Scott Turow, J.T. Ellison and more authors.

Organizers say the Southwest Florida Reading Festival is the largest one-day reading festival in Florida, attracting an estimated 18,000 people every year.

With the change in locations, though, Reading Fest organizers did have to cut back on some of the usual events. There won’t be a marketplace this year, for example, and they’ve also dropped the Teen Battle of the Bands and many of the Teen Zone events.

Instead, they’ll focus most of their teen-oriented efforts on the second-annual Comic Fest later this year, Horrom says. “We want to focus on the teens and give them a whole day to themselves.”

For more information, call 479-4636 or visit readfest.org.

Here’s a complete list of this year’s authors:

— Janet Beard

— Alex Berenson

— Jeffrey Brown

— J.T. Ellison

— Alan Gratz

— Craig Grossi

— Michael Hall 

— Sue Halpern

— Patti Callahan Henry

— Suzy Kline

— Jillian Medoff

— Carla Neggers

— Jessica Shattuck

— Scott Turow

— Jennifer Ward

Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells (Facebook), @charlesrunnells (Twitter), @crunnells1 (Instagram)