I’m glad this announcement didn’t go up yesterday, or I would have thought it was an April Fools joke targeted directly to schnooker me. The Wild Goose Festival has somehow slated many of my favorite writers and musicians for its 2013 lineup:

1) Philip Freakin’ Yancey! Only my favorite evangelical writer of all time. Just this week I’ve been going back through his book Prayer for juicy snippets to quote in Flunking Sainthood Every Day, the quotebook devotional I’m creating for Paraclete.

I’m the fangirl in the red, to the right of Indigo Girl Emily Saliers. Her dad (a theologian!) is on her other side.

2) The Indigo Girls! Only my favorite folk duo of all time. I have most of their albums. And just to name-drop a little, I even got to sit next to Emily Saliers once at a Jossey-Bass dinner at Emily’s restaurant, the Watershed in Atlanta. I doubt she remembers it, but I think we had a moment. (Photo left.)

3) Krista Tippett of APM’s On Being, which used to have the much better and less vague name Speaking of Faith, but which I love anyway despite the fuzzing of its title. She’s a consummate interviewer.

4) And many more, including the Festival grande dame, my friend and former colleague Phyllis Tickle; Lutheran “pastrix” Nadia Bolz-Weber; civil rights leader and author Vincent Harding; and others.

Thank you, Wild Geese, for shazamming my tastes so perfectly. I’m excited to be with you in August and glad I bought my tickets early, since with attractions like these even the voracious NC ticks won’t be able to keep folks away. As I blogged after my return, I had a simply amazing time last year and hope it can become an annual tradition.

(If you have not bought tix already, do so by May 1 or the price will go up. And there is always the chance you will be left circling the sixth hell if you don’t buy your tix soon, because I think the festival’s new venue limits attendance to 2,000 people. So don’t delay.)