CHAPEL HILL - John Grisham, Elizabeth Edwards and Pulitzer Prize winners Douglas Blackmon, Rick Bragg and Elizabeth Strout are among authors to be featured at the North Carolina Literary Festival Sept. 10-13.

Others among the 102 authors appearing at the free public festival, to be held at UNC, include Will Blythe, author of the Carolina-Duke basketball rivalry tome "To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever," former North Carolina Poet Laureate Fred Chappell, forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs and favorite North Carolina novelists Doris Betts and Clyde Edgerton.

With 24 authors already named for the festival, the 78 newly announced writers bring the total for the event to 102. A schedule for the festival will be announced in August.

The festival, whose theme is "A Celebration of Reading and Writing," will include more than author readings and talks across the campus. Exhibits, performances, book signings, sales and children's activities also will take place, said festival director Amy Baldwin.

"With this lineup of authors, the festival will offer something for everyone," Baldwin said. "With poets to novelists and genres ranging from thrillers and memoirs to romance and award-winning literature, the festival will be a landmark event for the Triangle that no one will want to miss."

The libraries of UNC and Duke and North Carolina State universities, with additional support from North Carolina Central University, organize and sponsor the festival, whose location rotates biennially among the Carolina, Duke and NCSU campuses. Since the festival began, it has been held in 1998 and 2002 at Carolina, 2004 at NCSU and 2006 at Duke. The festival is supported by private gifts and grants.

Previously named festival participants include musicians Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman and authors Jill McCorkle, Lee Smith and Anna Deveare Smith. Also revealed earlier were 13 children's authors, storytellers and illustrators, including John Claude Bemis, Clay Carmichael, Barbara Duncan, Alan Gratz, Kathi Littlejohn, Brian Pinkney, Carrie Ryan, Judy Schachner and R.L. Stine.

Authors conducting readings across the state in the festival's Authors on the Road program are P.T. Deutermann, Allan Gurganus, Randall Kenan, Joan Medlicott, Charles Price and Daniel Wallace. All but Medlicott and Price will also participate in the festival at UNC.