Director Robert Benton Joins Fiction-to-Film Session at Maine Literary Festival in November

Organizers of the Maine Author’s Series & Literary Festival learned today that famed writer/director/producer Robert Benton will participate in the Festival. He joins Richard Russo, David Kipen and Cathie Pelletier in the 2-hour fiction to film panel on Sunday, November 5 at the Camden Opera House.

Camden, Maine (PRWEB) October 13, 2006 -- Organizers of the Maine Author’s Series & Literary Festival learned today that famed writer/director/producer Robert Benton will participate in the Festival. He joins Richard Russo, David Kipen and Cathie Pelletier in the 2-hour fiction to film panel on Sunday, November 5 at the Camden Opera House. A fitting wrap to the three-day festival, the panel focuses on the roles of authors, screenwriters, directors and producers in converting books to screenplays and to successful films.

Benton directed such stalwarts as Kramer vs. Kramer, Nadine, Places in the Heart, Billy Bathgate and Nobody’s Fool. He wrote the screenplays for Kramer vs. Kramer, Nobody’s Fool, The Ice Harvest, Bonnie & Clyde, and Places in the Heart, among others. He collaborated on Nobody’s Fool and The Ice Harvest with Richard Russo, and they have worked together on many film and television projects over the years. “Robert Benton is a good friend and one of our most important directors. His body of work is amazing,”said Russo. “His participation at the inaugural Maine Literary Festival further enhances the importance and credibility of the festival.” “David and Cathie bring great critical and practical experience to the panel,” said Russo.

David Kipen is the Literature Director at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he helps to run NEA's Big Read initiative, designed to restore reading to its rightful role at the center of American life. In 2006 Melville House published his first book, The Schreiber Theory: A Radical Rewrite of American Film History, where he makes the case that screenwriters, rather than directors, are the primary authors of their movies. Previously book critic and book editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, David has worked as a literary and film journalist for over fifteen years, writing for the Atlantic Monthly, the Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Box-office, and World Policy Journal, among others. Cathie Pelletier The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Cathie Pelletier “burst onto the literary scene” with her acclaimed first novel, The Funeral Makers. Nine novels later, Pelletier is one of the country’s most respected authors, prompting The Washington Post to call her “an ambitious, fearless novelist.” In 1998, she made international literary news when Doubleday paid her a million-dollar advance for her novel Candles on Bay Street, which was recently optioned for film by Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions. Cathie Pelletier is the winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction, among others.

She has published seven novels under her own name. As K. C. McKinnon, she has written two novels, Dancing at the Harvest Moon (now in 18 languages and a CBS TV Movie starring Jacqueline Bisset and Valerie Harper) and Candles on Bay Street, published in ten languages. Her latest Pelletier novel, Running the Bulls, was released in August, 2005. Pelletier has adapted her novel A Marriage Made at Woodstock for producer George Stevens Jr. She also adapted her first novel, The Funerals Makers, for director Doug Liman (Swingers; Bourne Identity; Mr. & Mrs. Smith.) Filming will begin autumn 2006.

“We are honored and thrilled that so many wonderful authors are participating in the Literary Festival, particularly knowing their daunting schedules,” said Maryanne Shanahan, Festival chair. “It is a particular delight that each of them is just as excited about being part of the Festival as we are.”

Benton just wrapped The Feast of Love, due in 2007, with Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Selma Blair and Billy Burke.

The Maine Authors Series & Literary Festival is a scholarship project of the Midcoast Branch of the American Association of University Women, scheduled for November 3, 4, and 5 at the Camden Opera House, Camden, Maine. For further information and registration, go to www.maineliteraryfestival.com, call 207-837-2827, or go to the following bookstores: ABCD Books and the Owl & the Turtle, Camden, Maine; Left Bank Books, Searsport; Reading Corner, Rockland and Personal Books, Thomaston.

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