Annie Dillard, Madeleine L'Engle and Donald Hall formed a powerful trio and about 1,000 registrants came to Calvin's campus. In 1998 the combination of John Updike, Elie Wiesel and Katherine Paterson led to 1,300 registrants with hundreds turned away. And now, of course, come 2000 with 1,500 attendees expected and many, again, turned away because of lack of space. Brown notes that the Festival is a break-even event for Calvin. In fact, in 1998 there were about 350 students among the 1,300 registrants, including about 200 Calvin students.
Students also play a key role in shaping the Festival.
There's really nothing like this in the literary world. This is the truck pull of literary studies. Criteria for selecting Festival participants are pretty simple. Writers we bring to the Festival do not do that. We're not trying to be the People magazine of literary conferences.