For two days next week, the television industry packs up and moves to the North Fork. The North Fork TV Festival returns for its 11th year on Wednesday, October 21 and Thursday, October 22, at the Sound View hotel on the Greenport waterfront, and the names on this year's program are the biggest the festival has ever printed.

Anthony Anderson takes the Canopy Award

The festival's top honor, the Canopy Award, goes this year to Anthony Anderson, the actor and producer who spent eight seasons as Dre Johnson on black-ish, a role that earned him seven consecutive Emmy nominations, and who has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards himself. The award recognizes a member of the New York television community whose work opens doors for storytellers who might not otherwise get one, and past honorees have used the Greenport stage to talk about the industry with a candor the trade press rarely gets.

Anderson accepts the award at a dinner on Thursday, October 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the Halyard, the Sound View's restaurant overlooking Long Island Sound, with an after-party next door in the hotel's Piano Bar featuring a live set from the rising country-pop artist Juna. Dinner seats are sold separately from festival passes.

Frasier, Billions and the Enterprise's helmsman

The festival's one-on-one conversation series, In Talks With, returns for its second year, moderated by Dade Hayes of Deadline. Three of this year's guests are announced. Kelsey Grammer, who played Dr. Frasier Crane across three different series and holds six Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes and a SAG Award, headlines the lineup. He is joined by Kelly AuCoin, the character actor audiences know as Dollar Bill on Billions and Pastor Tim on The Americans, and by Melissa Navia, who grew up on Long Island and now flies the USS Enterprise as Lieutenant Erica Ortegas on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. A fourth guest has yet to be named.

The series earned its reputation fast. It debuted at last year's festival with six actors, including Richard Kind of Only Murders in the Building and Anna Chlumsky of Veep, and the conversations run unscripted, closer to a long dinner-table story than a press junket.

The festival that saw Tramell Tillman coming

If you want a reason to take a two-day television festival in a North Fork village seriously, consider its track record as a talent scout. Last year the festival gave its first Breakout Performance award to Tramell Tillman for his work as Milchick on Severance. Months later, Tillman won the Emmy. The Rising Star award went to Christopher Briney of The Summer I Turned Pretty, and the Canopy Award to Christopher Meloni, the Law and Order mainstay.

That eye extends to the unknowns, which is the festival's real mission. Founded by Noah Doyle and Jonathan Shafter as a showcase for independent television, the festival runs an annual pilot and script competition that draws entries from first-time writers and seasoned creators across every genre, with industry judges picking the winners. The winning pilots are screened at the festival for the public, and winning writers have gone on to major careers. Alongside the screenings, the two days fill out with panel discussions, networking lunches and pitch sessions where independent creators sit across from television executives with fifteen minutes to sell a show.

Why Greenport, and how to go

The festival has moved around the village over its first decade, setting up at Greenport Harbor Brewing Company, Claudio's and local vineyards before settling in at the Sound View, the mid-century motor inn turned boutique hotel strung along the bluff on Sound Avenue just west of the village. Late October is the North Fork at its best behavior: the tasting rooms are quieter, the restaurants have tables, and a festival badge comes with a built-in harvest weekend.

You do not need to be in the industry to attend. Festival passes and tickets to individual sessions and screenings are on sale now at northfork.tv, and the public is welcome at the screenings, panels and award events. For Long Islanders, it is a rare arrangement: the people who make the shows you stream all winter, answering questions in a hotel bar twenty minutes past Riverhead, no trip to Manhattan required.