This article recounts the experience of the Regent University Library in planning and implementing a festival of Tolstoy and Russian culture as part of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Big Read initiative. The NEA launched the Big Read in 2006 to counter the alarming decline of literary reading documented in its 2002 report Reading at Risk. Program and event planning are important competencies of librarianship. The authors hope that the lessons learned in planning a large event with many partners will be useful to others undertaking similar projects for the first time.