Deborah Z. Porter | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1958 Cleveland, Ohio, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | critic, executive director |
| Known for | Boston Book Festival |
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.
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 from Simmons College, and writing as a critic for Kirkus Reviews, Ruminator Review, and WBUR. [1]
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 citywide 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]
Harpoon Brewery is an employee owned American brewery, with locations in Boston, Massachusetts, and Windsor, Vermont.
The Journey Prize is a Canadian literary award, presented annually by McClelland and Stewart and the Writers' Trust of Canada for the best short story published by an emerging writer in a Canadian literary magazine. The award was endowed by James A. Michener, who donated the Canadian royalty earnings from his 1988 novel Journey.
The Toronto Book Awards are Canadian literary awards, presented annually by the City of Toronto government to the author of the year's best fiction or non-fiction book or books "that are evocative of Toronto". The award is presented in the fall of each year, with its advance promotional efforts including a series of readings by the nominated authors at each year's The Word on the Street festival.
The Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) is an exhibition center in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is among the largest exhibition centers in the Northeastern United States, with approximately 516,000 square feet of contiguous exhibition space. The main exhibition floor comprises three bays which can be isolated for separate shows or linked into one large space.
The culture of Boston, Massachusetts, shares many roots with greater New England, including a dialect of the Eastern New England accent popularly known as Boston English. The city has its own unique slang, which has existed for many years. Boston was, and is still, a major destination of Irish immigrants. Irish Americans are a major influence on Boston's politics and religious institutions and consequently on the rest of Massachusetts.
Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer, creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and was fiction editor at Boston Review. He also serves on the board of advisers for Freedom University, a volunteer organization in Georgia that provides post-secondary instruction to undocumented immigrants. Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience, particularly the Latino immigrant experience.
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The Boston Vegetarian Society (BVS) is a non-profit educational organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, with the purpose of promoting and supporting vegetarianism and veganism. It hosts monthly speaking events and an annual vegetarian food festival in the fall.
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The Boston Book Festival is an independent nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the name of its main event. The nonprofit was founded in 2009 by Deborah Z Porter, and aims to "celebrate the power of words to stimulate, agitate, unite, delight, and inspire by holding year-round events culminating in an annual, free Festival that promotes a culture of reading and ideas and enhances the vibrancy of our city."
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Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF) is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit arts organization dedicated to promoting the best in independent film and filmmakers from around the world, inspiring savvy film lovers and introducing the power of film to student filmmakers.
Electric Zoo is an annual electronic music festival held over Labor Day weekend in New York City on Randall's Island. The festival represents all genres of electronic music, bringing top international DJs and live acts from multiple countries to four stages.
Milford Oyster Festival, sometimes shortened to "Oysterfest," is an annual cultural festival held on the third Saturday of August throughout the city of Milford, Connecticut. As a major tourist attraction, billed as the largest one-day festival in the New England region and listed among the top 10 annual events in Connecticut, the Oyster Festival draws over 50,000 attendees each year. It is planned by the non-profit organization Annual Milford Oyster Festival, inc. (AMOF), largely run by volunteers.
GrubStreet, Inc. is a non-profit creative writing center located in Boston, Massachusetts that hosts workshops, seminars, consultations, and similar events. It also offer scholarships.
The SweetWater 420 Fest is an annual event presented by SweetWater Brewing Company in Atlanta, Georgia held on a weekend closest to Earth Day. In 2014, the festival announced it would be celebrating its 10th anniversary at its new home in Centennial Olympic Park.
A comic book convention or comic-con is a fan convention with a primary focus on comic books and comic book culture, in which comic book fans gather to meet creators, experts, and each other. Commonly, comic conventions are multi-day events hosted at convention centers, hotels, or college campuses. They feature a wide variety of activities and panels, with a larger number of attendees participating in cosplay than most other types of fan conventions. Comic book conventions are also used as a vehicle for industry, in which publishers, distributors, and retailers represent their comic-related releases. Comic book conventions may be considered derivatives of science-fiction conventions, which began in the late 1930s.
