LA’s 5 Best Annual Book Festivals

This festival will be held on August 1st, 2015, from 10:00am – 6:00pm, at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. The fair was started in 1999 by Cynthia E. Exum, who wanted to hold an African-American literary festival. The local community joined in, and the Leimert Park Book Fair now brings in over 5,000 attendees and over 200 authors. Admission is free and open to the public. It boasts five outdoor stages: fiction, children’s literature, poetry, cooking and health. There are also indoor panel discussions by memoir-ist Cynthia Young and comic book author Hannibal Tabu. Past writers include Eric Jerome Dickey and poet Nikki Giovanni. This year, the fair is holding a special tribute to Maya Angelou.