President Barack Obama will be the focus of a special panel discussion at this year’s Fall for the Book Festival. Three distinguished writers offer diverse perspectives on Obama’s life and career on Tuesday, September 22, at 1:30 p.m. in Research I, Room 163, on George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus. The panel discussion will include: Charisse Carney-Nunes, author of the children’s book I Am Barack Obama and senior vice president for programs for the Jamestown Project, a think tank dedicated to making democracy real; political consultant Cedric Muhammad, founder of the news-analysis daily BlackElectorate.com and president of Black Electorate Communications, whose goal is to “advise and apprise the Black electorate, the hip-hop generation, Black and mainstream media, elected officials, religious leaders, educators and the business community on issues that impact the Black and urban vote”; and New York Observer journalist Niall Stanage, author of Redemption Song: Barack Obama: From Hope to Reality, based on his time as one of the only foreign-born reporters to travel on board Obama’s campaign plane. The program is sponsored by Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and Friends of the Sherwood Regional Library.

ALSO IN THE NEWS:

Sherman Alexie, 2009 Mason Award Winner, has new fiction in this week’s New Yorker. You can read “War Dances” here. And don’t miss Alexie in person at Fall for the Book, on Tuesday, September 22, at 7:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall, Center for the Arts, on Mason’s Fairfax Campus.

For more information, check out the complete schedule of festival events here — now available as a PDF for your to download and print at home!