After ten years, what still draws people to the Wisconsin Book Festival?
Though we are, and will continue to be, a book festival, we’re a lot of other things, too. Sometimes I wish we could call ourselves an idea festival, because while we mostly deal with books and authors, more and more we’re branching out and working with talented people who are voicing their beliefs and ideas beyond the printed page—like the First Wave Spoken Word and Hip Hop Arts Learning Community project from UW–Madison’s Office of Multicultural Arts Initiative or Milwaukee storytellers Ex Fabula, and even Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Life audio essay series.
I’ve said this before, but in this period of great change in the book business and beyond I think it’s important to keep an open mind when asked, What is a book? A book doesn’t have to have pages—some of the earliest books were clay tablets and scrolled parchment. I like this definition: A book is a portable container for information. So there is room in the Wisconsin Book Festival for a ’zine, a song, an e-reader, a placard from the bus, even spoken stories from community elders—and no end of “books” that might never sit spine-out on a shelf.
With all the digital activity going on (and going mobile) these days, what does the future hold for books and the places where—and ways in which—we read?
Well, books aren’t going away, but they are changing. We’re seeing more schools, libraries and independent bookstores offering electronic methods of acquiring and reading books. Despite what people may think about e-readers (and we know some of our Festival fans are skeptical of them), anecdotal evidence suggests that people who use electronic readers may read more books on average than those who don’t. And if people are reading, that’s a good thing. One of the big questions, though, is that of access—will the rising popularity of electronic readers make it more difficult for niche titles and less commercial genres to find audiences, or will it make it easier? So far, it could go either way.
Another major change we have witnessed over the past few years is the increase in self-published submissions to the Festival. Authors have to apply to get a slot in the Festival, and for the first several years it was less common to receive submissions from authors whose books hadn’t gone through a more conventional publishing house. The label “self-published” once carried a cultural stigma, but we see that eroding among our audiences. Now that we see companies like Amazon not only selling books (and the e-readers used to access those books) but also acting as the publisher of books, the distinction begins to break down regarding how or where a book is published, as well as raising questions about the meaning of that distinction.
No one thinks the publishing industry isn’t in the midst of dramatic change; but the book is not dead. Not even close.
If everyone has a Kindle, Nook, or some kind of e-reader ten years from now, how will the basic idea of a book festival change?
Not by much. We help readers connect, in person, with authors they love and with new authors they’re experiencing for the first time. It doesn’t matter whether readers are interacting with books on paper or electronic devices, the act of meeting an author, of hearing her read her own words in her own voice, and of getting to ask questions of her in an intimate setting still has tremendous value for readers.
There was a series in the New York Times earlier this year that examined whether Americans were shortchanging their need for human connection based on how much time we spend interfacing with our devices. The series reminded me that as life becomes more digitized the spaces that carve our time for personal connection are all the more important.
What is there about Wisconsin that makes a book festival particularly appropriate?
Well, we’re a very literary state! Even if we don’t have data to prove this, we suspect there is something about the landscape here, maybe something about the deep retreat of our winters and the unabashed joy of our summers, that makes our citizens an exceptionally observant and reflective bunch. Of course, we at the Festival are biased in this assertion. While fine, award-winning writers come from all over the world to be here every fall, we’re especially proud to have so many legends hail from right here in our own backyard: David Rhodes, Michael Perry, Lorrie Moore, Kevin Henkes, Renee Graef, Tom Jones, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Anthony Bukoski, Jean Feraca, Patrick Rothfuss, Lynda Barry, Bill C. Malone, Marilyn L. Taylor, Yi-Fu Tuan, Ron Wallace, Fabu, Richard Quinney, Deborah Blum, David Maraniss, Alison Townsend, Rubén Medina, Jane Hamilton, Jerry Apps, Terese Allen, Justin Isherwood, Dasha Kelly, John Lehman, Lois Ehlert, Dwight Allen, Agate Nesaule, Bruce Dethlefsen, Kashmira Sheth, CJ Hribal, Sara Rath, Joseph Rodriguez, Lesley Kagen, David McLimans … should I keep going? And that’s just a few of them! We’re also a state, by and large, that likes to talk about Big Ideas, and we have a history of doing so in our especially civil Midwestern way. Times are a little different right now, granted, but we like to think that a place like the Wisconsin Book Festival might help people pause and think, talk and listen.
What do you consider the biggest successes, failures and surprises of the Wisconsin Book Festival?
Some of the things we are proudest of have been smaller events, like last year’s youth writing workshop at Kennedy Heights Community Center with Hmong author Kao Kalia Yang. She held dozens of young, mostly Hmong American and African American kids spellbound while she told a story from her own childhood and got them to write and then read their own ghost stories. Thanks to the folks at the center, the kids then saw their stories published as a book. That event, and others like it in community centers around the city, are the result of partnerships that we are constantly working to expand. Another partnership that resulted in a memorable event was with the Aldo Leopold Foundation when we brought author and environmentalist Wendell Berry to the festival in 2009.
One area in which we have had less success than we would like is in including authors with more varied political perspectives. Madison’s reputation as a very liberal town has sometimes made it difficult for us to attract conservative authors and thinkers.
Festival events have always been free and open to the public. What effect does the tightening of public purse strings have on that and on other operational realities?
We are committed to keeping the Wisconsin Book Festival free to all who wish to come, period. If this is a festival of words and ideas, a festival that inspires thought-provoking conversation, then we believe it makes no sense to exclude the words and ideas of those who would be deterred by entry fees. However, you’re right to note that the economic reality of today is a little different than it was a few years ago. We don’t have the financial freedom to experiement, to try as many new ideas in the hope that they’ll stick. We still, in our hearts, come from a place that values experimentation, but operationally we have to be a bit more cautious.
Because we feel strongly about keeping the Festival free—and because the Festival isn’t free to produce—we have to look to other means of generating income to support this work. We have worked hard this year to grow the base of Festival Friends, a group whose private support helps sustain Festival programming. In working closely with local businesses, organizations and individual supporters, we may consider other changes to the way the Festival is structured so that we can continue offering the events that tens of thousands of readers across our region have grown to cherish. The Festival is produced by the Wisconsin Humanities Council, but in many ways it belongs to the community; input from our audiences and our supporters has already resulted in new and exciting changes, and I don’t see that going away. The question today is, How can we produce the Festival while adhering to certain financial constraints? We have immense respect for the creativity and ingenuity of our community, and we know that working together, we’ll find the answer.
Part of the answer has already been put forward: ask everyone who loves the Wisconsin Book Festival to contribute in whatever ways they can. We have always been great at communicating what we have to offer, sharing our event schedule and talking up our authors and getting people excited about the Festival. Our audience attendance numbers reflect this. But we haven’t always been very good at communicating what we need in terms of support from the community.
Can you personally share any wisdom gleaned from ten years of festival success?
Well, I’ve learned that I’ve got a lot to learn. I’ve learned about my own biases. I’ve learned to share the work, to ask for help, and to let people help me. I’ve learned over and over not to procrastinate, but I still do it (I’m working on that one for next year). I’ve learned that remaining curious is much more useful than trying to know everything.
If you had one magical wish for the 10th anniversary of the Wisconsin Book Festival, no matter how farfetched, what would that be?
I wish author Grace Paley could come back, and that she’d be hosted by Mark Gates. Mark, who was one of the festival’s earliest and most enthusiastic friends, was named book “Sales Rep of the Year” by Publishers Weekly, for his work with Farrar, Straus & Giroux—Grace Paley’s publisher. He died nearly two years ago, a couple of years after Ms. Paley did, but his contributions to the literature here in Wisconsin and across the world are legendary.
Perhaps wishing for those who have passed sounds silly or oversweet, but it gets at something important. Imagine connecting with someone you love who has died. Does your throat get tight? Do your eyes burn? Is your heart thumping?
Reactions such as these are what I wish for all of us who assemble each October for the Wisconsin Book Festival.
James Baldwin once said, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world. But then you read. It was books that taught me, the things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
So, that’s my magical wish.
