Our dedicated committee has lined up a stellar roster of authors for this literary weekend that makes Tucson shine. I’m so proud to be a part of it!

Thanks to committee members Holly Schaffer of UA Press, Corey Knox of UA Women’s Studies, Gwen Harvey author of “Esperanza Means Hope” and anthropologist, Kate Reeve and Bruce Dinges of the Arizona Historical Society, for making history together.

Here are just a few of the events we’ve planned:

Saturday, 10 a.m., Gallagher Theater, “Becoming America: Immigration Memoirs Across the Decades,” with Ishmael Beah, former child soldier in Sierra Leone and author of “A Long Way Gone”; former Arizona Gov. Raul Castro, author of “Adversity Is My Angel” and the state’s only Hispanic governer; and UC Berkeley history professor Paula Fass, author of “Inheriting the Holocaust: A Second Generation Memoir.”

“Be the Moon; Stories of War and Hope” with Ishmael Beah, at 1 p.m., Integrated Learning, 130.

Also at 1 p.m.”Parenting Memoirs: Maine to California,” with Martha Tod Dudman, author of “Augusta, Gone”; Paula Fass, author of many books on American childhood; and Peter Likins, former UA president and author of  “A New American Family. A Love Story,” Koffler, 216.

Simon Ortiz in Conversation with Leslie Marmon Silko, a Tucson literary treasure whose memoir “The Turquoise Ledge” was recently published, Chemistry, 111.

On Sunday at 11:30 a.m., following “Right On! Far Out! Looking Back at the ’60s” at 10 a.m. in the Gallagher Theater, delve into “Epic Stories: Journalists Write the American West.”

Tired yet, or overstimulated but had enough coffee? I’m going for the gelato.

At 2:30 p.m., head back to the Gallagher Theater for Pulitzer Prize Winner T.J. Stiles in conversation with Paul Hutton.

Gee, you could just camp out at the theater for two days, emerge for a little sunshine and gelato.

There’s lots more happening in history/memoir/biography.

But yeah, I really want to hear my good friend Thacher Hurd discuss writing and illustrating books for boys at 1 p.m. on Saturday in the Education Building, 349. “Bongo Fishing,” his first chapter book, is so fun! His talk is at the same time as the parenting panel that my other dear friend Martha Dudman will be on…and I can’t miss Mark Rudd’s “Writers as Social Activists” workshop on Sunday at 11:30 a.m. at Integrated Learning, 135.

More coffee, anyone?