If you don't get tickets for bookfest events, don't despair
There's a certain sadness that sets in when some readers fail to get tickets to a particular event at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which is coming to UCLA on April 26 and 27. Tickets, which will become available this Sunday through Ticketmaster, go pretty fast--I expect they'll clear out this time almost as quickly as tickets for Eddie Vedder's two nights at the Wiltern earlier this month. But if they do, there is less of a reason to despair than a book lover may think.
Aside from a bewildering number of book vendors to go broke over, the festival's offerings on the outdoor stages this year will cater to the tastes of a wide variety of visitors.
Ready to cook: Moulton
(Jim Cooper/for the Times)
We've had such tremendous success with the children's area and staging that I think people forget the other offerings available out in the fresh air. There's the Culinary Stage, featuring tips from such familiar kitchen favorites as Sara Moulton and Steven Raichlen, while novelists Richard Price and Sherman Alexie are top draws for the Los Angeles Times stage -- not to mention Valerie Bertinelli 
discussing life, Van Halen and weight loss described in her memoir "Losing It."
She'll be there: Bertinelli
(Richard Drew/AP)
Oh, and then there are the poets.
The Poets' Corner continues to be a favorite stopping place for festival
guests. It's the perfect shady, quiet spot in the midst of the celebration: this year, poets reading from their work will include Mark Doty, Albert Goldbarth, Jean Valentine, Susan McCabe, Stuart Dischell, Marvin Bell and many many others.
Mark Doty and friend
(Kenneth Chen/HarperCollins)
You can get a fuller sense of what's going on outside by clicking here. In some ways, getting shut-out of indoor events isn't so bad afterall (I know, easy for me to say, right?). But with so much going on with the stages, imagine what you'd miss if you didn't.
Nick Owchar
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