By MARSHA MERCER
We think of reading as a solitary pastime, but it’s often
social and cultural as well.
Who wants to talk about a great book? Just about
everybody, as the explosion of book clubs in recent years attests.
Bring writers into the conversation, and you have a book
fair. Add more readers and writers, and it’s a book festival.
About 75 book fairs and festivals are now held in 43 states.
More than 120 authors and illustrators and upwards of 100,000 people are
expected to throng the 15th annual National Book Festival on Sept.
24 in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in the nation’s capital.
Stephen King, whose books have sold an amazing 350
million copies worldwide, is the festival’s marquee draw. If you didn’t snag a
free ticket for his sold-out appearance, you can still visit with big names.
No tickets are required for the other speakers, who, unlike
King, will sign their books. Among them: filmmaker Ken Burns, journalist Bob
Woodward and authors from at least seven foreign countries.
The celebration surrounding the opening of the Museum
of African American History and Culture the same day likely will extend to the
festival, where the roster includes basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, civil
rights leader Rep. John Lewis, television producer Shonda Rhimes and novelist
Colson Whitehead.
In addition, many readers may see Carla Hayden, the
new Librarian of Congress for the first time. Hayden, the first African
American and the first woman in the position, was sworn in Wednesday.
Free and with programs for all ages, the national festival
is the legacy of first lady Laura Bush, a former librarian with the lifelong mission
of inspiring people to read.
In November, the Texas Book Festival, which Bush
started when she was first lady of Texas, will mark its 20th
anniversary. She and the Library of Congress launched the national festival in
2001, just three days before the horrors of 9/11.
Bush didn’t invent book fairs, of course, but she did
popularize them for modern readers.
Book fairs got their first 20th century
boost in 1919, when a Chicago department store held Book Week. One hundred
thousand customers poured into the store to shake hands with 14 authors and buy
books from 60 publishers, Bernadine Clark wrote in “Fanfare for Words,” a 1991
history of book fairs published by the Library of Congress.
The Miami Book Fair started in 1984 and the Southern
Festival of Books in Nashville in 1989. The Tennessee
festival takes place Oct. 14 through 16.
In Virginia, the Fall
for the Book festival, sponsored by George Mason University, runs Sept. 25 to
30, and the Virginia Festival of the Book is next set for March in
Charlottesville. The 2017 Alabama Book
Festival will be held in April in Montgomery.
Festivals are quick-hit gatherings for readers and
writers, but the nation’s first, permanent celebration of American writers past
and present is in the works. The American Writers Museum is under construction
on the second floor of an office tower in downtown Chicago and plans to open in
March.
The idea for the museum came from Ireland, where the
Dublin Writers Museum honors great Irish writers. In this country, the writers
museum will fill a void, says Jim Leach, former chairman of the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
“We collect in central points the artifacts of
civilization and honor politicians and soldiers, athletes, artists, inventors
and entrepreneurs, but we neglect our writers,” Leach said in a statement on
the museum’s website.
It probably won’t surprise anyone that Laura Bush is among
those supporting the writers museum.
Like the Texas and national book festivals and
literary events around the country, the new museum will “celebrate writers of
every era, every genre and every race,” she says in a video, and “inspire everyone
to fall in love with reading and writing.”
I hope she’s right.
©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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