The Red Dirt Book Festival has been a creative home in Oklahoma for nearly 1,500 readers, writers, illustrators, publishers, storytellers, scholars and performers since 2003. Provocative topics like Characters in Oklahoma Politics, Tulsa’s Greenwood Pioneers, and Books on Trial: Red Scare in Oklahoma have been discussed with enthusiasm, creativity, and sometimes healthy controversy.

Imagine Oklahoma is the conversational theme for the 4th biennial Red Dirt Book Festival, which will be held in Shawnee November 5-7, 2009 at the Expo Center and on the campuses of Oklahoma Baptist University and St. Gregory’s University.

Special events planned for the festival include a writing workshop for area high school students, a keynote address by author Billie Letts, appearances by Oklahoma personalities Galen Culver, Ron Stahl, and Susan Miller, and a tea and scone reception followed by a guided tour of OBU’s Raley Chapel stained glass windows.

The festival continues to have tremendous community involvement with major support from the Pioneer Library System, the Oklahoma Humanities Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Other major contributors include the Shawnee Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Oklahoma Baptist University and St. Gregory’s University, the Ar-Hale Family Foundation, the Dougherty Fund, the Kirkpatrick Family Fund, and the FireLake Grand Casino as well as many other local donors and volunteers.