The Border Book Festival is a non-profit organization founded in 1995 by a group of writers, artists and community people committed to celebrating literature and the art of story in the southern United States/Northern México border region. Based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the Border Book Festival believes that literature and the arts can bridge the many boundaries--racial, ethnic, generational, cultural, socio-economic, and gender-based--that divide our community. Ours is a grass roots organization of volunteers that impacts its community by offering programs that are blueprints of positive communication, interaction and connection between people in our borderland region.

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The Border Book Festival is a catalyst between many different community groups and organizations. Groups that we have worked with in the past include the Court Youth Center, the Las Cruces Public Schools, the City of Las Cruces, the Branigan Cultural Center, the Branigan Library and many other city, state and governmental agencies, businesses and community centers. We see ourselves as a bridge builder and model for positive exchange between diverse people in the border area.

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Our annual festival takes place at the end of March or early April each year and features many activities: Libros Y Más/Books And More, a trade show of local, regional and national presses and writers, workshops, panels, a hands on activity program for youth, Libros en Vivo/Books Alive, as well as many readings and literary events including the awarding of the Premio Fronterizo, given to a southwestern writer for their life-long contribution to literature that transcends borders, real and imagined, and whose body of work has done much to add to the southwestern literary canon. In addition, we present the Sunshine Community Service Award to a local business, organization or person who works to promote literature and the arts of story at a grass roots level.

The cornerstone program of the Border Book Festival is the Emerging Voices Program, a series of hands-on writing workshops held throughout the year at various venues throughout the area. Invited local and visiting national writers work with Emerging Voices writers of all ages to produce an anthology, Voces: An Altar of Stories, as well as present a series of readings in the community. The 2002/2003 Emerging Voices program will allow area writers and featured visiting writers to go into sites targeted for community and youth.

The range of the Border Book Festival is large and growing. We are committed to bringing audiences to writers and writers and book artists to audiences. Our programming is innovative, challenging, and transformative. The BBF has made considerable impact in the Southern New Mexico border corridor as well as throughout the region. We have been touted in the New York Times as a "place where books matter," and featured in Publisher's Weekly as one of the top regional book festivals in the U.S.

The 9th Annual Border Book Festival will take place April 3-6, 2003. The theme is The Divine Frontier/La Frontera Divina.

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To address questions about this web site, please contact The BBF.

This page was last updated 18 March, 2003 by Enchanted Graphics, and copyright 2002-2003, The Border Book Festival.

The Border Book Festival does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sex, age, or disability. If you need accommodation due to a disability to attend and participate in any of these events, please call us at 505-524-1499. For TTY communication, call us using the New Mexico Relay Network at 1-800-659-8331 and ask them to place a call to us.

http://www.zianet.com/bbf.