Decatur Book Festival

Perhaps my favorite duty as a DBF intern (thus far) is coordinating the attendance lists for the writing workshops. Checking the workshop email, putting names on lists and writing back anonymous–but much-anticipated–emails makes me feel quite useful.

However! I feel far less useful when the eBay spam in my workshop email inbox outnumbers the registration requests. Come on, people! Are you going to let eBay spam beat you? Sure, I’ve heard from plenty of enthusiastic registrants. But I know that there are lots of writers and aspiring writers in Decatur and Atlanta. Where are you? What are you doing on August 29th and 30th?

It’s really easy, I promise; it’s over a week away! Take off work! Switch your shifts! Look at the list of workshops (here). I am pretty sure that there is something you will like. If it is on Friday at 4:00, then just shoot me an email with your name and the name of the workshop (yes, I said the. These workshops are going on simultaneously, which kind of sucks if you don’t know how to be in more than one place at a time. If you do know how to do this, let me know immediately). I will put your name on the list if it’s not full! I will send you all the little details about your workshop so that it will be as easy to get to as possible!

If you want to attend the C. Michael Curtis and Elizabeth Cox Welcome and Keynote, you should go. You don’t need to email me, because this is a public event. However, you should get there a little early because this event will probably fill up. And if you want to attend anything on Saturday, do that too! You also don’t need to tell me about this, unless you are just really excited. This is understandable. But I would recommend arriving a couple minutes early for the Saturday events and talks as well–you do want to get a good seat.

For the record, I am planning on attending David Fulmer’s workshop, “Sex and Violence: Writing About Them Without Sounding Like a Virgin Pacifist.” But maybe screenwriting is your bag. If this is the case, you may want to look into the Philip Nutman workshop. Perhaps you’re one of those people who scans the obits in the AJC every day, so you should count on attending Kay Powell’s workshop. Or maybe you’re a teen slam poet (or you want to unleash your inner slam poet). Regie Cabico can help you with this!

So don’t be shy! Email me at workshops@decaturbookfestival.com and let me register you for a writing workshop.

One of the too rarely sung heroes of the AJC Decatur Book Festival is Lee Ann Harvey, of Volunteer! Decatur.  She has a head for detail like just about no one else I know. She works long, long hours to provide not only the hundreds of volunteers who make the Decatur Book Festival possible but the volunteers who work the Decatur Arts Festival, the Beer Festival, the Wine Festival, the Beach Party, and… well, just about anything involving good times and large groups of people in Decatur. And on top of all that, she finds volunteers to coach, mentor, and help out so many people in our community who need a little assistance. I have no idea how she manages it all.

Lee Ann has already gathered an army of volunteers for this year’s Decatur Book Festival, but she still needs some more. Here’s what she says:

It takes hundreds of volunteers to put on a world-class book festival. Be a part of the annual AJC Decatur Book Festival by volunteering.  We hope you will join us for this important event to Decatur and to the metro-Atlanta area. You will find a wide variety of volunteer opportunities to choose from at the festival, including Set Up, Close Down, Children’s Area, Book Signing/Author Talk Venue Support, and more. Visit www.decaturbookfestival.com for author information and a schedule of events.

For more information about volunteer opportunities and to sign up, please visit www.decaturbookfestival.com/2008/Participate/index.php (or click on the “Participate” link on the Decatur Book Festival website). You may also sign up to volunteer at the Decatur Book Festival by contacting Lee Ann Harvey at (678) 553-6548 or email leeann.harvey@decaturga.com.

Thanks,
Lee Ann

Please get in touch with Lee Ann if you can help.

There’s this rare and singular, exuberantly liberating delight I’ve experienced on only a very few occasions when reading a book and, once, when watching a movie, transcendent times when my unconsciously assumed confines for art are revealed as merely hologram fences, readily walked right through to open territory. It’s a pre-verbal feeling, an electric ecstasy, but the best words I can find to translate it are: “You can’t do that! But, oh my god, you did! And it’s brilliant! And so I guess you can do that, but I never would have dared! Wow! Wow! Oh, wow!”

The one movie was Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge.” One of the books was Walter Moer’s “The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear.” And then there’s Jack Pendarvis, who manages to create that feeling for me with almost everything he writes. (Disclosure: He once contributed a piece to The Duck & Herring Co.’s Pocket Field Guide, of which I am an editor.) Jack recently published his first novel, “Awesome,” about a supremely arrogant and self-involved giant named Awesome who falls in love with a woman who is, gasp, able to resist his charms and endowments. She sends him on a series of quests, a treasure hunt of sorts to earn her love. The novel is just full of those “you can’t do that” moments.

Jack will appear at the Decatur Book Festival with Sheri Joseph, but you don’t have to wait until then to see him. He’ll be the author of honor at A Cappella Books‘ next Ballroom Book Bash, an event presented in partnership with The Chattahoochee Review. It’s Thursday, August 14, 8 p.m. at the Highland Inn. See A Cappella’s site for more details. Then come to the AJC Decatur Book Festival two weeks later to see him in conversation with his friend, novelist Sheri Joseph. The chemistry between these friends will make for a crazy fun event.

Okay, free association time.

Pop-up books.

Go.

Hm… pop-up books =  Spot the dog, toddlers, cardboard books, find the hidden animal (with a little bit of feather on it so it seems real)…

Basically, pop-up books = not my primary choice of reading material, even as a younger child. There never seemed like there was much to learn from pop-ups once I passed the I-can’t-read-yet stage. And I’ve kept that mindset through my teenage years: pop-up books are for babies, for two-year-olds, you don’t read pop-up books to yourself, not to get new information or to get excited about a subject—

And then Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda proved me dead wrong.

They’ll get a chance to prove you dead wrong too in a few weeks at the AJC Decatur Book Festival’s Target Children’s Stage when they discuss their newest pop-up book, Encyclopedia Mythologica: Fairies and Magical Creatures.

These guys don’t mess around. As soon as I turned past the bright purple cover to page one, I was inhaling information and stories about the magical creatures themselves (changelings, elves, unicorns, fairies of the deep, troublesome fairy creatures… I could go on…) and their origins in stories and cultures from around the world (Scandinavia, Greece, France, South Africa, Brazil, Japan, Australia…). Throughout it all, the colorful, detailed pictures popped out, slid across, pulled down, opened up, revealing more legends, characters, worlds, and ideas—so many more that when I finally shut the book, I felt more knowledgeable about the world than I had been half an hour before.

Go ahead. Ask me anything.

Better yet, ask the creators themselves, on the Target Children’s Stage, Saturday August 30th at 10:30 AM.

Expanded Books has up a video of a conversation between sci-fi authors John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow. It’s an interesting, lightly provocative, often funny look inside the minds of two bright stars of science fiction. Scalzi will be at the book festival, appearing with Kevin J. Anderson, Tobias Buckell, and Cherie Priest, on Saturday, August 30, 11:15 at the Old Courthouse. No Cory Doctorow this year, but I hope to get him to a future festival. I mean, a Decatur Book Festival we’ll have in the future. Which will then be the present. You know, a present attained merely by continuing to exist and passing along the normal inertial arrow of time. You understand what I’m saying, right? Though an actual “Future Festival” sounds like a lot of fun. Someone get on that, OK?

On a less theoretical note, this is the first time I’ve encountered Expanded Books, but it looks at first blush like a good resource. They have a pretty decent collection of videos that they produce in partnership with publishers, giving you another path into a book. I haven’t combed through their archives yet, but I bet more authors coming to the festival can be found therein.

Hey, was just about to hit post when I saw this one featuring Kevin J. Anderson. Let me know in the comments if you find any more. Or if you find videos of this year’s authors posted elsewhere.

See you all soon.

(Found at BoingBoing.net.)

When I heard that Skip Williamson is going to be participating in the festival this year, I racked my brain trying to figure out if I knew anything about him. I was horrified to realize that I did not.

It probably sounds a little dramatic to chastise myself for not being familiar with Skip Williamson, but I was just surprised. For a few years now I have been really into underground comics. My level of “into”ness is, of course and perhaps unfortunately, dependent on my income and energy level–I’m not always an enthusiastic or efficient waitress, gas is expensive, driving out to Oxford Comics takes a lot of effort. Okay, I can be pretty lazy. But, despite my frequent indolence and sloth, I’ve managed to maintain my interest in comics. For the sake of listing and name-dropping, I love R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Winsor McCay, Julie Doucet, Max Andersson, and Chester Brown. Those are only a few. How did Skip Williamson slip past me?

But it’s never too late! The culture of underground/indie comic/comix (call it what you will) used to be considered cheap and low-brow, and still is by some. But gradually, people are realizing that comics aren’t literary or artistic cop-outs–this is an incredibly vibrant art form. There are so many artists and voices that I don’t think I will ever get through them all. And I’m not sure I would want to–I want there to always be someone or something I haven’t read. I want to keep moving forward!

So I’m taking off work on Saturday, August 30th, and I’m going to the Vinson Gallery where Williamson’s work will be on display. From 3:00 to 3:45 I’m going to be in Decatur’s City Hall attending “The Art of Skip Williamson.” I think it will not only be one of the more bad-ass (for lack of a better word) events in the festival, but also more bad-ass than anything I’ve seen happen in Decatur lately, which is a refreshing thought.

Can you handle the truthiness? If so, tune in to The Colbert Report tonight at 11:30 p.m. on Comedy Central to see Eric Roston, who will talk about his new book, “The Carbon Age.” I’m guessing Roston and Colbert may not see exactly eye to eye on the role carbon plays in climate change. And if Roston starts discussing, as his book does, the Big Bang, I bet Colbert thinks he’s talking about Sweetness.

Why do I bring this up? Because Roston is also coming to the book festival, as part of our environmental track. He’ll be appearing with Jay Hakes, from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. Hakes’ book is “A Declaration of Energy Independence.”

Roston’s a really nice guy, and his book is fascinating. Check him out tonight, then check him out again on Labor Day weekend at the AJC Decatur Book Festival.

Wrist strong, everybody!

As some of you already know, in addition to working on the book festival, I serve as the production editor of The Duck & Herring Co.’s Pocket Field Guide, a literary magazine inspired in part by the Old Farmer’s Almanac. Each time we release a new issue, we throw a launch party of some sort. Singing is often involved. And reading. Sometimes dancing. One time a breath holding contest.

Well, to celebrate the release of our Pocket Field Guide for Warm Weather 2008, we’re holding a car smashing. No, seriously. We’re going to have a junker car in the parking lot of Eyedrum. For a buck, you can hit the car five times with a sledgehammer. For five bucks, you can take as many swings as you can manage in two minutes. Slip us some extra dough, and we might let you write your ex’s name on the car with a Sharpie before you smash it.

Have some bottled up aggression to release? I think we have the solution. We’ll also have an informal reading, a sing-along, and maybe some more surprises. Come on out and join us.

When the folks from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution proposed last year to create a giant crossword puzzle to hang in the festival grounds during the book festival, I thought it was a fun idea. I had no idea, however, that it would be so intensely popular. Throughout the weekend, whenever I passed the Decatur Bandstand, there was always a line of people awaiting their turn to take a crack at solving the big beast of a crossword.

So this year, the folks at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, along with several of us from the book festival, are going to create several different crosswords and hang them all over the Book Market Street Fair. Each one will be different.

This means we need a lot of crossword clues (and answers). Want to help?

If you have a crossword clue and answer (or several) to contribute to this year’s crosswords, add it in the comments. All literary topics are fair game. Sure, we’d like some of them to have something to do with authors in this year’s line-up, Georgia authors, and the literary history of the South. But we also want your Dr. Johnson, Herman Melville, and Stephen King clues. Or clues about bookstores. Printing and publishing history. The science of paper. You get the idea.

We’ll choose our favorites and include them in the crosswords.

And yes this does mean you can get the answers to some of the crossword clues by checking back to this post before you come to the festival.

We have to send these to the printer on July 28, so you have until July 27.

Ready? Go!

Last week I was eating breakfast with a friend, and we were lamenting the sad fact that there are no more new “Harry Potter” books to get excited about, no more midnight parties where we freak out for an hour, discuss fearfully who we think will die, and make sure no cruel soul yells out spoilers (seriously, I wore my iPod in one ear as soon as people got in line for “Deathly Hallows”).

Suddenly she said, “Well, you’ve read the Twilight series, right?”

I have been hearing more and more about these books (something to do with a hot vampire, right? I’ve seen the Facebook groups), but I shook my head no– I hadn’t read them.

She gasped and stared at me with wide eyes. When she got over her shock, she started jumping up and down. “OH MY GOSH. I am bringing all three of them over to your house this afternoon. You will LOVE them. And the fourth book’s coming out on August 2nd and we HAVE to go to a midnight party!”

Sure enough, five hours later she knocked on my door with three very thick novels piled high in her arms.

And I took the first one to the living room and I sat. And I read. And I read. And I read.
Finished. Hm.

The next day, I read. And read some more.

Finished. Well, I can’t stop now.

Late the next night, I came to the end of “Eclipse,” my mind reeling with humans and vampires and werewolves and a definitive side that I want Bella to pick (and even I know that I’m in the minority on this). And less than twelve hours later, during a meeting at Little Shop of Stories, co-owner Diane Capriola asked me, “Have you read the Twilight series?”

I laughed. “Well, now that you mention it…”

So now I have a midnight party to go to. Little Shop of Stories, Decatur Square, 11 PM, Friday, August 1. Trivia, food that even vampires won’t refuse, and of course my own midnight copy of “Breaking Dawn” by the impressive Stephenie Meyer.

Wanna come?

[Editor’s Note: Claire is the Decatur Book Festival’s Children’s Programming intern.]