Mystery novelist Walter Mosley, "M*A*S*H" star and author Mike Farrell and Virginia favorite Adriana Trigiani are among the headliners at the Virginia Festival of the Book.

The festival will take place March 26-30 in Charlottesville.

Former CBS anchorman Roger Mudd will get things started the night before. He'll talk about his new memoir, "The Place to Be," at a pre-festival event March 25 at 7 p.m. at the Senior Center, 1180 Pepsi Place in Charlottesville, (434) 974-7756.

That event is free, as are most others during the five-day run of the festival. So is Trigiani's on March 27 at 8 p.m. She'll talk about her Big Stone Gap series on a panel with Homer Hickam ("Rocket Boys," "Red Helmet") and Jill A. Davis ("Ask Again Later," "Girls' Poker Night"). Free tickets will be distributed one hour before the event at University of Virginia's Culbreth Theatre, 109 Culbreth Road, (434) 924-3376.

Other events, such as Mosley's talk March 30 at 4 p.m. and Farrell's on March 29 at 8 p.m., require tickets. For instance, tickets to the Mosley event, a fundraiser that benefits the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Center for the Book, run from $38 to $125. Tickets to the Farrell event cost just $10.

Tickets for those two events come directly from the location for those talks, the Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St. Call (434) 979-1333 or visit theparamount.net.

Tickets for other events come directly from the festival's Web site, vabook.org.

That's also the best place to get answers to your questions, to find information about the hundreds of participating authors and to get updates on ticket availability. You can also call the festival office at (434) 924-6890.

Among the other authors appearing at the festival are poets Claudia Emerson, who won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for "Late Wife"; Natasha Trethewey, who won the 2007 award for "Native Guard"; U.S. poet laureate Charles Simic ("My Noiseless Entourage"); and Virginia poet laureate Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda and some of her predecessors.

Also speaking are fiction writers Colm Toibin ("Mothers and Sons") and Nathan Englander ("The Ministry of Special Cases").

Four authors will speak on a Crime Wave panel: David Ignatius ("Body of Lies"), Margaret Coel ("The Girl with The Braided Hair"), James W. Hall ("Hell's Bay") and Jacqueline Winspear ("An Incomplete Revenge").
Contact Jann Malone at (804) 649-6820 or jmalone@timesdispatch.com.