The Festival Marketplace is the heart of the event

Organizers of the 12th annual West Virginia Book Festival are seeking exhibitors and vendors to participate in the event, which is scheduled for Oct. 13 and 14 at the Charleston Civic Center. The festival, which attracted about 7,000 attendees in 2011, is presented annually by the Kanawha County Public Library, West Virginia Humanities Council, The Library Foundation of Kanawha County, The Charleston Gazette and the Charleston Daily Mail.

One major component of the event is the marketplace, where attendees shop for books and other merchandise at the booths of regional publishers, book sellers, sponsors, individual authors and other vendors with a literary mission.

“Individual authors are welcome to band together to rent a booth,” said Pam May, festival chairwoman. “Please keep in mind that we generally sell out in late July or early August, even though the deadline for contracts is Aug. 15.”

The festival offers something for all age groups. A variety of authors will participate in book signings, readings, workshops and panel discussions. Previous headliners include Nicholas Sparks, Lee Child, Diana Gabaldon and Jerry West, among others. Activities for children include special programs and a section of the marketplace filled with children’s activities. Admission to the festival is free.

A vendor packet is available for download at www.wvbookfestival.org. Visit the website or call 304-343-4646, ext. 246, for more information.

This post was written by Alan Engelbert, Kanawha County Public Library Director.

Last month, thousands of people gathered in the Charleston Civic Center to celebrate books, authors, reading and a sports legend. The 11th Annual West Virginia Book Festival brought in people from all over West Virginia and many other states to enjoy two days in Charleston, filling hotel rooms, restaurants and stores, while being entertained and enlightened by authors and illustrators from the Mountain State and across the nation.

The West Virginia Book Festival appeals to people of all ages. Children were spellbound by Erin Turner’s stories about ghosts and monsters in West Virginia and were inspired to create their own monsters by decorating masks after the presentation. They also saw how picture books are illustrated and learned about kindness, friendship and respect in two anti-bullying programs presented by Bright Star Touring Theatre.

There were workshops for teachers, programs for aspiring writers and presentations by storytellers and humorists. A packed audience was mesmerized by Gerald Blaine and Clint Hill, authors of The Kennedy Detail, as they told about their work as secret service agents for the Kennedy family, including detailed information about what really happened the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

Lee Child talked about the creation of Jack Reacher, the fictional hero in 17 books he has written. The audience also learned that Mr. Child’s book One Shot is currently being made into a movie starring Tom Cruise. After autographing books for hundreds of his fans, Mr. Child met briefly with Jerry West and discovered that Mr. West is an avid fan of the Jack Reacher novels.

Saturday’s program ended with a presentation by basketball legend Jerry West, who was interviewed onstage by Senator Joe Manchin. Mr. West talked about his current book, West by West, and then spent four hours meeting with fans and signing copies of his book.

On Sunday, Dave Pelzer, author of A Child Called It, encouraged his audience to overcome the disappointments of their past and take responsibility for their own happiness. He spent time with the audience before and after his program, signing books and hearing how his story has inspired them to live fuller lives.

Each morning, there was a long line of people waiting for the used book sale to open. The sale is a wonderful way for the library to raise funds while giving people the opportunity to buy books at greatly reduced prices. Every year, local teachers come to the book sale to purchase books for their classroom. The Word Play area also provided dozens of activities for children, and there were 57 vendors in the sold-out marketplace.

Pam May, WV Book Festival Chairperson and Marketing Supervisor at Kanawha County Public Library, works closely with the festival committee throughout the year to plan the event. Nearly 200 volunteers are recruited to work before, during and after the weekend.

An event of this size, that reaches thousands of people in the community, would not be possible without the help of the numerous presenters and sponsors who provide support. This year’s book festival was presented by Kanawha County Public Library, The Library Foundation of Kanawha County, Inc., West Virginia Humanities Council, The Charleston Gazette and the Charleston Daily Mail. Sponsors were the Martha Gaines and Russell Wehrle Memorial Foundation, Segal and Davis Family Foundation, Pamela D. Tarr and Gary Hart, The Friends of The Library Foundation of Kanawha County, Target, Walmart, BB&T West Virginia Foundation, West Virginia Library Commission, West Virginia Center for the Book and Borders Express.

Thank you to everyone who made the 11th Annual West Virginia Book Festival such a success. I appreciate all of the staff, volunteers, authors, presenters, sponsors and vendors who made this event possible. And thank you to everyone who attended. I look forward to seeing you at next year’s book festival on Oct. 13 and 14 and welcome you to visit Kanawha County Public Library throughout the year.

In the West Virginia Book Festival marketplace, James Casto of Huntington (right) shows his new book, "Highway to History," to Charleston resident Chuck Daugherty at the West Virginia Book Company booth. Photo by Chris Dorst.

Confession: I missed much of the West Virginia Book Festival this past weekend with “flu-like symptoms,” as they say in professional sports. But in the few hours I was there, it seemed like things were hopping pretty good.

The marketplace was full, both of vendors and of customers. I caught a few minutes of Lee Child’s talk, and he hit all the right buttons with his fans. I heard secondhand that nearly 1,000 people showed up to hear Jerry West., and that he was fantastic with the people, particularly the kids, who lined up for him to sign their books. People raved as they were coming out of the talk by ex-JFK Secret Service agents Gerald Blaine and Clint Hill. And I heard the Dave Pelzer session on Sunday was attended by more than 200 people, and Pelzer was very good about making time to talk with everyone who wanted to talk.

(The Gazette’s Megan Workman and Chris Dorst had some coverage here and here, and Kenny Kemp had some additional photo coverage here; the Daily Mail’s Bob Wojcieszak has some photos here. West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Adam Cavalier has some coverage focusing on the book sale here.)

Jaimy Gordon reads from "Lord of Misrule" at the West Virginia Book Festival. Photo by Chris Dorst.

But my lasting memory of my abbreviated Book Festival will be Jaimy Gordon at the annual Mary Lee Settle Session. She talked about her experiences in West Virginia, and how they affected her Northern Panhandle-set, National Book Award-winning novel “Lord of Misrule.”

Apparently, you can work out from the geography in “Lord of Misrule” that the main site of the novel’s action — the fictional Indian Mound Downs racetrack — is, in fact, the location of the former state penitentiary in Moundsville. Gordon said several people have figured this out and mentioned this to her. There are plenty of other recognizable West Virginia landmarks: the Natrium plant, the Poky Dot cafe, the Ritzy Lunch diner.

Gordon — who remembers seeing the Marsh Wheeling Stogies sign in Wheeling as she was driving from her Baltimore home to college in Ohio — said she’s always “aspired to be a West Virginian.” Is there a committee for that somewhere? Because we’d love to have her, right?

Anyway, thanks to all of you who came to the festival and made it a success, and thanks to the dozens of workers and volunteers who put this event together. As always, it’s much appreciated.

Same time next year?

Well, here we are. The 11th annual West Virginia Book Festival starts in a matter of hours.

I was going to link to everything we’ve done here on the blog about this year’s authors, but that would be an awful lot of links.

Many of those links would involve the Book Festival headliners — Lee Child, Jerry West, Jaimy Gordon, Dave Pelzer. That’s only natural; they are the headliners. But they’re not the entire festival, not by a long shot.

So if you come for Lee Child or Jerry West, don’t forget to take some time to look at the other programs and wander through the marketplace. There are a lot of people in West Virginia and the surrounding region writing and publishing books, and they’d love to talk to you.

You can find out where and when all the programs are here, and where everyone is in the marketplace here.

We’ll be tweeting throughout the weekend with the hashtag #wvbookfest, so look for that.

And enjoy. Hope you hear something you like, and you find something good to read.

With the West Virginia Book Festival less than 24 hours away, there’s some last-minute coverage of the festival marketplace to mention:

| The Charleston Daily Mail’s Zack Harold has his second Book Festival story in two days, this one on one of my favorites in the festival marketplace, book appraiser Jim Presgraves of the Wytheville, Va., bookshop Bookworm and Silverfish.

| WOWK-TV has an interview with Dan Foster, who’ll be signing copies of his book “In the Crook of the Oak” at the Shadetree Publishing booth during the festival.

In 2004, 2-year-old Alex Bostic and 3-year-old Alexis Harmon helped their mothers peruse the children's section at the Kanawha County Public Library's used book sale at the West Virginia Book Festival. Photo by M.K. McFarland.

Three parts of last year’s West Virginia Book Festival were popular enough for people to stand in line. Besides the Nicholas Sparks and Diana Gabaldon events, there was — as there is every year — the Kanawha County Public Library’s annual used book sale.

No reason to expect anything different this year. A few hundred people will again be in line in the Charleston Civic Center lobby when the doors to the sale open at 9 a.m. Last year, a few hardy souls got there before 5 a.m. But the sale is so huge that people who don’t come until much later still find some desired books amid the long tables.

In Thursday’s Charleston Daily Mail, Zack Harold writes about the work that goes into the sale every year:

Once a month, maintenance workers take boxes of books to the library’s storage unit on Bigley Avenue, where the books are shrink-wrapped and placed on pallets.

[Sale coordinator Sandy Frercks] doesn’t know how many books will be for sale this year, but there are more than 1,000 boxes and other materials in storage waiting to be set out.

So there will be a lot of books, cheap (hardcovers $2, big paperbacks $1, small paperbacks 50 cents). Plus the collector’s corner, where you might find, say, a 300-year old Bible. All good, right?

It’s also true that if you like libraries, you should support them. The book sale raised $42,000 for the Kanawha library last year, according to the Daily Mail. Some people — OK, me — will buy a bunch of books, read them and re-donate them for the following year’s sale.

But there’s a larger issue, as a blogger at the new Bookriot website writes in a post aptly titled “All Hail the Library Book Sale.”

[A]s I shopped the sale on Saturday, I felt truly like I was actively participating in and contributing to my community with the loudest voice I’ve got – my money. Did I need all six books? No, most definitely not. But I supported a worthy cause, mingled with my neighbors, chatted with a librarian about whether I would enjoy “The Mists of Avalon” (she talked me into it), and recommended one of my favorite authors to a fellow shopper (John Irving – and she bought three of the books I suggested). In a city (Washington, DC) where everyone is from someplace else and it’s easy to feel isolated, even though everyone spouts activism and participation, being able to participate in my community in a small but significant way gave me lots of warm fuzzies.

I hadn’t thought much about this before, but I’ve been to few events in Charleston where I see strangers talking to each other as much as they do at the book sale — to say nothing of the friends and acquaintances who haven’t seen each other in a while, then find themselves on opposite sides of the paperback mystery table. The sale gets crowded, and there are some long lines, but I’ve been going for almost 15 years and everyone’s usually in a pretty good mood.

Last weekend, I went to the Rail Road Days celebration in Hinton, and stumbled upon the Summers County Public Library’s book sale. I found a couple of books. One of my companions found a couple more. Another found a bookshelf.

With a lot more to choose from this weekend, I’m looking forward to what I might find — and hoping I can carry it home.