Carroll Book Festival Releases Full Author Schedule, and Its Kids' Character Meet & Greet Sells Out

Carroll County Public Library has released the full schedule for the Carroll Book Festival, mapping out where and when each of the festival's 100-plus visiting authors will appear across six stages on Saturday, Sept. 19.

The library announced the schedule in a Facebook post this week, directing people to the "Festival Info" tab on the festival website for the full lineup of author talks and panels, and to the "Featured Authors" tab for the additional authors who will be signing at vendor tables rather than speaking on stage.

Also this week, the library announced a second piece of festival news: the ticketed Character Meet & Greet, the 9 a.m. kickoff event where kids can pose with Bluey, the Gruffalo and other costumed characters, is sold out. A waitlist is open for anyone still hoping to get in.

Westminster Wire covered the five-year effort behind the festival last month. Here's what the newly released schedule and the sellout mean for the Sept. 19 event.

The festival runs 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Carroll County Farm Museum, 500 S. Center St., with free admission for all ages. Programming is split across six stages and presentation areas, each running its own lineup of panels and talks roughly every hour.

At the Black-Eyed Susan Stage, three co-writing duos — Robbi Behr and Matthew Swanson, Jillian Hughes and Kenny Curtis, and Rachel Renée and Nikki Russell — open the day at 11 a.m. discussing how they write and illustrate books together. Later panels there dig into keeping secrets in fiction about women's lives (noon, with Caroline Bock, Eliza Knight, Michelle Brandon and Lyn Liao Butler), unreliable narrators and antiheroines (1 p.m., with Sarah Pekkanen, Aggie Blum Thompson and Emma C. Wells, moderated by Alex Finlay), and writing real people and places back to life (2 p.m., with Susan Higginbotham, Elizabeth Letts, Laura Kamoie and Steven Holmes).

The Chesapeake Stage leans toward young-adult fiction, opening at 10:30 a.m. with a panel on fantasy, dystopia and romance (Michelle Jabes Corpora, MJ Hastings, Anna Bright and Rebecca Danzenbaker), followed by darker fare at 11:30 a.m. (Christina Ferko, Shannon J. Spann and Jenni Howell), a middle-grade panel at 12:30 p.m. aimed at "the toughest audience of all" (Lindsay Currie, Craig Kofi Farmer, Roseanne Brown and Wayne Thomas Batson), and a 1:30 p.m. conversation on contemporary teen romance (Celeste Dador, Brianna Peppins and Charlene Thomas, moderated by Mona Shroff).

The Oriole Stage runs historical and speculative fiction through the early afternoon — historical fiction at 10:30 a.m. (Mariah Fredericks, Sarah McCoy, Heather Webb and J'nell Ciesielski), stories at the edge of the supernatural at 11:30 a.m. (Madeline Martin, Leslye Penelope, Kate McElderry and Chanel Cleeton), a nonfiction-fiction conversation on climate and nature writing at 12:30 p.m. (Greg Melville and Julie Carrick Dalton, moderated by Joyce Muller), and a romance panel at 1:30 p.m. (Avery Flynn, Liz Lawson, Lee Adams and M.C. Vaughan, moderated by Christi Barth). At 2:30 p.m., Maryland Humanities presents its 2026 One Maryland One Book selection, "No Sense in Wishing" by Lawrence Burney, a Baltimore culture writer's essay collection on the city, Black diaspora music and the traditions that shaped him.

The Terrapin Stage opens at 10 a.m. with a McDaniel College-presented conversation between YA author Jared Reck and Mona Kerby of McDaniel's Writing for Children and Young Adults program, where Reck now teaches. Later sessions there include graphic novelist John Gallagher at 11:30 a.m.; a 12:30 p.m. panel on voting rights with Elaine Weiss and Jeffrey Blount, presented by Park Books on Main and the Park Literacy Project (the first 50 attendees get a free signed copy of Weiss's "Spell Freedom"); a 1:30 p.m. conversation on sports books with Mel Brennan and Neil Beller, moderated by Ted Zaleski of the "Two Sides to the Story" podcast; and a 2:30 p.m. panel on the path to publishing with Jean Burgess, M.K. Shouland and Morgan Lage.

Younger kids have their own lineup at the Storytimes in the Children's Garden, running from 10:30 a.m. movement sessions with CCPL through readings by Ann McCallum Staats, Grace Russo, Danielle Joseph, Robbi Behr and Matthew Swanson, Mona Kerby, and Lois Szymanski, wrapping up at 3 p.m.

The Penguin Random House Stage is built around the festival's marquee name. Jodi Picoult, the #1 New York Times bestselling author touring behind her new novel "Hollow Bones," takes the stage at 11 a.m. in conversation with Linda Holmes, host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, followed by a ticketed photo op at the Gazebo at noon. As Westminster Wire reported in August, the 300-ticket package covering both events sold out almost immediately after it went on sale.

The same stage hosts a romance panel at 1 p.m. (Ava Wilder, Ali Brady, Lindsay Hameroff and Ali Rosen, moderated by Bradley James), a horror panel at 2 p.m. featuring Richard Chizmar, Alma Katsu, Adam Cesare and W.H. Chizmar, and closes at 3 p.m. with Kenny Curtis and Jillian Hughes, the father-daughter team behind National Geographic Kids' "Greeking Out" podcast and book series.

The library's second announcement this week was about the festival's other ticketed event: the Character Meet & Greet, a 9 to 10 a.m. kickoff at the Farm Museum ahead of the festival's official 10 a.m. start. According to the event's Eventbrite listing, kids were invited to meet Bluey, Bingo, the Gruffalo, the Blue Crayon from "The Day the Crayons Quit," Corduroy, Peter Rabbit, Max Meow, Froggy and Carroll County Public Library's own mascot, Corky the Penguin.

Per the festival's FAQ, both adults and children needed tickets to attend, with one adult allowed to supervise up to three children; admission was free for kids age 2 and under. Breakfast snacks (granola bars, cereal bars and pastries) along with juice and water were included, with a coffee truck on-site selling drinks for purchase.

As of the library's Facebook post this week, all tickets are gone. "Our Character Meet & Greet at the Carroll Book Festival is now sold out," the library wrote, pointing hopefuls to a waitlist. It's the second ticketed event tied to the festival to sell out, after Picoult's session.

Outside the ticketed events, the festival remains free and open to all ages, with a Vendor Village of literary-themed vendors and local food trucks, and no reservations needed for any of the author panels, which the library says will run first-come, first-served.

The event takes place rain or shine, is entirely outdoors, and offers free parking at both the Farm Museum and the nearby Carroll County Ag Center. The full schedule is posted online and as a downloadable PDF at carrollbookfestival.org, along with a festival FAQ covering everything from bag policies to the venue's pet-free rule.