"The Festival" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft written in October 1923 and published in the January 1925 issue of Weird Tales. It is considered to be one of the first of his Cthulhu Mythos stories.

The story was inspired by Lovecraft's first trip to Marblehead, Massachusetts, in December 1922. Lovecraft later called that visit

the most powerful single emotional climax experienced during my nearly forty years of existence. In a flash all the past of New England--all the past of Old England--all the past of Anglo-Saxondom and the Western World--swept over me and identified me with the stupendous totality of all things in such a way as it never did before and never did again. That was the high tide of my life.

The narrator's path through Kingsport corresponds to a route to the center of Marblehead; the house with the overhanging second story is probably based on Marblehead's 1 Mugford Street. The church in the story is St. Michael's Episcopal Church on Frog Lane, built in 1714 and the oldest Anglican church building still standing on its original site in New England. The church, which stands on a modest hill, has a rare colonial crypt where early parishioners were interred, and had a steeple for most of the eighteenth century. Lovecraft would have discovered these facts from visiting the church and talking with the rector, a fact corroborated by his signing of the guest register.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.

Rokia Traoré (born January 26, 1974) is a Victoires de la Musique award-winning Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist. Born in Mali as a member of the Bambara ethnic group, her father was a diplomat and she travelled widely in her youth. She visited such countries as Algeria, Saudi Arabia, France and Belgium and was exposed to a wide variety of influences. Her hometown of Kolokani is in the northwestern part of Mali's Koulikoro region.

While the Bamana have a tradition of griot performing at weddings, members of the nobility such as Rokia are discouraged from performing as musicians. Rokia attended lycée in Mali while her father was stationed in Brussels and started performing publicly as a university student in Bamako. Unusually for a female musician in Africa, Rokia plays acoustic guitar as well as sings, and she uses vocal harmonies in her arrangements which are rare in Malian music. In 1997, she linked with Mali musician Ali Farka Touré which raised her profile. She won an Radio France Internationale prize as "African Discovery" of 1997, an honor previously won by Mali's Habib Koité in 1993. As well as guitar she plays ngoni (lute) and balafon

Theodore L. Gunderson (November 7, 1928 - July 31, 2011) was a retired American Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent In Charge and head of the Los Angeles FBI. He was most famous for handling the Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy cases. He was the author of the best selling book How to Locate Anyone Anywhere.

Ted Gunderson was born in Colorado Springs. He graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1950. Gunderson joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in December 1951 under J. Edgar Hoover. He served in the Mobile, Knoxville, New York City, and Albuquerque offices. He held posts as an Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge in New Haven and Philadelphia. In 1973 he became the head of the Memphis FBI and then the head of the Dallas FBI in 1975. Ted Gunderson was appointed the head of the Los Angeles FBI in 1977. In 1979 he was one of a handful interviewed for the job of FBI director, which ultimately went to William H. Webster.

After retiring from the FBI, Gunderson set up a private investigation firm, Ted L. Gunderson and Associates, in Santa Monica. In 1980, he became a defense investigator for Green Beret Doctor Jeffrey R. MacDonald, who had been convicted of the 1970 murders of his pregnant wife and two daughters. Gunderson obtained affidavits from Helena Stoeckley confessing to her involvement in the murders. He also investigated a child molestation trial in Manhattan Beach Califonia. He claimed to find tunnels. In an interview (see link below), Gunderson discusses incidents U.S. government sponsored terrorism and the reasons behind them. He was a member of the Constitution Party. He died on July 31, 2011 from complications from cancer.

Daniel Keenan "Dan" Savage (born October 7, 1964) is an American author, media pundit, journalist and newspaper editor. Savage writes the internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column Savage Love. Its tone is frank in its discussion of sexuality, often humorous, and hostile to social conservatives and Rick Santorum's views on homosexuality. Savage has clashed with cultural conservatives on the right, and the gay establishment, on the left. He has also worked as a theater director, both under his real name and under the name Keenan Hollahan, using his middle name and his grandmother's maiden name. In 2010, Savage and his husband Terry Miller began the It Gets Better Project to help prevent suicide among LGBT youth.

Dan Savage was born to William and Judy Savage in Chicago, Illinois. He is of Irish ancestry. The third of four children, Savage was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary North, which he has described as "a Catholic high school in Chicago for boys thinking of becoming priests." Though Savage has stated that he is now "a wishy-washy agnostic" and an atheist, he has said that he still considers himself "culturally Catholic."