Coming back for its 12th annual festival, The Pygmalion Festival has unveiled the MUSIC and LIT lineups for 2016. This year’s festival – which takes place in Champaign-Urbana, IL – kicks off on Friday, September 16 and runs through Saturday, September 24, 2016. This year’s The Pygmalion Festival is happening over a record 8 days; the music portion kicks off Thursday, September 22 and concludes on Saturday, September 24.

Baltimore-based synth pop outfit FUTURE ISLANDS will headline this year’s festival and they will be joined by rising L.A. hip hop star VINCE STAPLES, newly reformed indie rock royalty WOLF PARADE, progressive EDM wunderkinds LOUIS THE CHILD, Scottish rockers FRIGHTENED RABBIT, and Canadian fuzz pop band ALVVAYS.

The 2016 LIT lineup features literary stars and former University of Illinois professors JEAN THOMPSON and TYEHIMBA JESS who will join their award-winning former students in KIM CHINQUEE and MATTHEW MINICUCCI. National Book Critics Circle Award winner EULA BISS will take center stage and Chicago Sun-Times columnist and critically acclaimed author NEIL STEINBERG will read from his forthcoming memoir. Other features include BOOK FORT, a Chicago-based roving book fair, and LITERARY DEATH MATCH, considered by The LA Timesto be “the most entertaining reading series ever”.

Other artists and authors of note include CAR SEAT HEADREST, POSTER CHILDREN, PRINCE RAMA, RUSSIAN CIRCLES, KIM CHINQUEE, AJJ, THE HOOD INTERNET, FOXING, LUCY DACUS, ALOHA, MATTHEW MINICUCCI, THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE AND I AM NO LONGER AFRAID TO DIE, JOAN OF ARC, MILD HIGH CLUB, and many more.

The Festival, which added a TECH component in 2015 and will expand upon it in 2016, has yet again added to its cultural arsenal by debuting a second weekend to the festival in order to include an outdoor FOOD festival, featuring some of the best local chef-driven restaurants in the area. In its first year, the festival will be experimenting with the concept by working with just a small number of kitchens and chefs in order to create the blueprint for a much larger event in the years to come. The Pygmalion FOOD Festival will take place in Downtown Champaign on September 16-17, 2016.