From staff reports

CHAPEL HILL -- An estimated 12,000 people attended the North Carolina Literary Festival, held Sept. 10-13 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Festival director Amy Baldwin also said that about 3,000 visitors attended the children's activity tent on Saturday and Sunday. Sixty-seven presentations were given by 100 authors.

The top-attended non-keynote event was the reading and interactive storytelling by children's author R.L. Stine, with about 450 children and parents present. Among those close behind was children's author Judy Schachner, who signed books for about three hours after her session, drawing her character Skippyjon Jones every time. Also heavily attended were sessions by authors Elizabeth Edwards, and Elizabeth Spencer with Allan Gurganus.

Visitors donated about 600 children's books, which were given to the pediatric oncology clinic at UNC Hospitals.

The campus bookstore the Bull's Head Bookshop sold more than 2,200 books, Baldwin said. By the festival's close, it had 495 followers on Twitter. About 133 tweets were issued, many of them during the festival, many of them by visitors and participating authors.

The free public festival, funded by gifts and grants, is organized and sponsored every other year by the libraries of UNC and Duke and North Carolina State universities, with additional support from North Carolina Central University. For more information, visit www.NCLiteraryFestival.org.