In February 2005, while driving back from the South Carolina Book Festival with a friend, Daren Wang wondered aloud: Why could Columbia sustain a successful festival while metropolitan Atlanta could not?
Atlanta is well known for its many festivals: Dogwood, Music Midtown, The Inman Park Neighborhood Festival, and Virginia Highland Summerfest, just to name a few. These events shape the summer landscape of Atlanta. But despite several earlier attempts, there still was no free festival celebrating the written word.
Over the course of that drive from Columbia, Wang hatched a plan to establish a book festival modeled after the overwhelmingly successful Decatur Arts Festival. Decatur, a small town five miles east of Atlanta, is one of the most pedestrian-friendly towns in Georgia, with a strong emphasis on smart growth and independent restaurants and stores. With a MARTA station in the city center, Agnes Scott College forming its Southern border, and Emory University just two miles away, it seemed to be the perfect place for a big book party.
Soon, Wang had enlisted Tom Bell––who had worked with him on both his literary magazine, Verb, and his syndicated public radio series, The Spoken Word––to concoct a new hare-brained scheme, The Decatur Book Festival.
The first step was soliciting the help of Bill Starr at the Georgia Center for the Book (GCB). Starr had helped launch the South Carolina festival years before, and had been talking with Alice Murray at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about launching a festival in downtown Atlanta. Why not Decatur instead? With the GCB and the AJC on board, the festival took a big leap forward, and its planners called together book dealers, retailers, local business and government officials, publicists, and publishers. Out of those meetings, a core planning group emerged: Wang, Bell, Murray, and Starr, along with Linda Harris (City of Decatur), Richard Lenz (President of Lenz, a Decatur-based integrated marketing company), and Judy Turner (President of Decatur First Bank).
“The festival always used a stone soup model. We put a big pot in the middle of town, and everyone brought what they could,” Wang says. “We ended up with a team that not only knew the book business, but also media and marketing, local businesses, and how to do put together the nuts and bolts of a festival.”
It would take another 18 months of nearly full-time volunteer work to bring together the inaugural festival, which drew over 100 authors and a stunning 50,000 people to the downtown Decatur square over Labor Day weekend 2006.
The event got rave reviews, and it was clear that festival visitors and authors had fallen in love with Decatur. The city’s appeal––a combination of supportive local businesses and restaurants, eager and able volunteers, and the ability to walk easily from venue to venue––contributed greatly to the remarkable festival spirit.
Building on the success of the inaugural event, the 2007 festival involved twice as many authors and several new venues. The revamped MARTA plaza became the new crossroads for the festival, housing the Target Children’s Stage and showcasing the many businesses and restaurants that line the area. These enhancements and others paid off, as the 2007 event drew 60,000 people––10,000 more than the previous year. The Decatur Book Festival was well on its way to becoming a permanent fixture in Atlanta.
“We always knew Atlanta had a thriving writing and book community, but it needed a centerpiece to bring all the parts together,” said Tom Bell, now the festival’s program director. “That’s what the festival does best.”
In 2008, the festival continues to grow, with more strategic partnerships, numerous high-profile authors, and even more great activities for both adults and kids.
“Publishers have come to see the DBF as a significant part of the nationwide publishing landscape,” said Wang, now DBF executive director. “The sponsors that make this all possible have stayed committed to us through a tough economy. In a lot of ways, it feels like a coming of age for us.”
The Decatur Book Festival has come of age and promises to bring Atlanta together around books for many years to come, all the while maintaining a spirit of fun and childlike wonder as we celebrate the written and spoken word.
Thank you to our Sponsors:
Web Site Design by Lenz