Belmont Bookshop's 2nd Annual Literary Festival returns to Belmont, NC on September 5th, 2026 (Labor Day Weekend) . Join us for a holiday weekend of Family Entertainment, Author Conversations, Chess Tournament, Live Theater Performances, and more!BECOME A SPONSOR!OPENING KEYNOTE WITH STEVE SHEINKIN & MAURICE ASHLEYThe opening keynote is a free event to attend with an RSVP for all festival guests. Steve Sheinkin is the acclaimed author of fast-paced, cinematic nonfiction histories, including Diamond Fever!, Fallout, Undefeated, Born to Fly, The Port Chicago 50, and Bomb. He is also the co-author, with Ruta Sepetys, of the New York Times bestselling middle grade novel, The Bletchley Riddle. His accolades include a Newbery Honor, three Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, a Sibert Medal and Honor, and three National Book Award finalist honors. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, with his wife and two children. Maurice Ashley is a chess grandmaster, a three time national championship coach, an author, and a world-renowned commentator for some of the game’s biggest matches. In 1999, he earned the title of grandmaster, making him the first African American in chess history to do so, and in 2016 he was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame. He lives in Florida. ABOUT THE BOOKThe hopes of humanity rest on the shoulders of one chess player in this true graphic novel about the epic chess match between a human and a super computer, by bestselling author Steve Sheinkin, Chess Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, and award-winning comics artist Thien Pham. It’s May 1997 in Manhattan, New York. World champion Garry Kasparov is about to begin a six-game match against Deep Blue, the cutting-edge super computer developed by a team of visionaries at IBM. No machine has ever defeated a chess champion in a multi-game match. If it happens, it will be a major turning point in human history. It will be, as Newsweek declares on its cover, “the Brain’s Last Stand.” Will the human mind prevail? Or is this checkmate for humankind?