The last weekend in April, Newburyport Massachusetts will turn into a literary focal point of the Bay State as the eponymously named literary festival will take over the seaside community. With a full programming schedule April 29th and 30th, featuring such diverse authors like Brunonia Barry, Paul Harding and Andre Dubus III, the Newburyport Literary Festival is a uniquely intimate yet complete celebration of books.
Ahead of the festival, we are pleased to get some time with Newburyport Literary Festival Co-Director Jennifer Entwistle to talk about the festival, its past and future.
Can you talk about the origins and growth of the Newburyport Literary Festival?
Vicki Hendrickson is the original driving force behind the creation of the Newburyport Literary Festival (NLF). Vicki’s day job is managing the Adult Education program for Newburyport. She attended a festival in Memphis and wanted to create something similar here. The first festival was 2 years in the making. She did a lot of research on other festivals first to figure out what to do in Newburyport.
That first year there were about 40 authors at the festival. Now – 6 years later – we have 80! But while we have grown in size, our format has stayed generally the same. We have a mix of readings and panel events with a track at the public library dedicated to children’s authors and a track at one of the churches dedicated to poetry. All of the other venues are adult fiction and nonfiction events.
What kind of support have you received from the community of Newburyport?
Our festival exists due to generous grants from our local banks and cultural councils and we use that money in part to buy books each year for hundreds of local students and we bring an “author in residence’ to come to the school to read and talk to the kids. Supporting literacy in our community is one of the foundational goals of the festival.
We absolutely could not exist without our volunteers. Each year we put out a call for help and we are overwhelmed by the positive response from the town to pitch in to make this event happen. We have a great mix of returning and new volunteers. These folks do everything from set up venues to manning information booths and cleaning up after the events. It takes a lot of hands to manage 10 venues all day and we are very grateful for their support!
What has been the feedback from participants, particularly the authors?
The feedback has been so positive – that’s what motivates me to start all over again as soon as it’s over. The volunteers coming back year after year tell us how much they enjoy the day and there is a buzz in town from people hurrying from one event to the next. One of my favorite complaints that I hear every year is that there are so many events that people hate having to choose between them. That’s a good problem to have. Last year Wally Lamb summed it up with, “ Warm and welcoming audiences, a beautiful town, beautiful weather, an expertly-planned festival, a nice hotel: what’s not to love? I had a ball.”
Where do you see the festival heading in the future?
I do not see the festival growing any bigger than it is this year. Bigger isn’t necessarily better. We want the events to be well attended but intimate. As I mentioned above, the festival has doubled in terms of speaker participation over the years and I think it’s important that we do not grow beyond the town’s capacity. Right now all our venues are within walking distance. The events draw a good crowd but the venues are small enough that the audience can see the authors, ask questions during the event and chat with them after at the book signing. We don’t want to lose that sense of intimacy or create an impersonal atmosphere where the audience and the authors do not connect.
The world of publishing is rapidly changing and we want to keep relevant with out topics as well. The book blogger panel this year and our Books On the Nightstand podcast event last year are examples of events that focus on the new ways that technology and social networking are changing how readers learn about books. For some, this is an introduction – for others, just part of an ongoing conversation.
Of this year’s programming, what do you think could be a hidden jewel?
I am excited about local writer Tom Ryan and his dog Atticus M. Finch who have a new memoir out about climbing the 48 4000-footers of the White Mountains. Atticus is a guaranteed crowd pleaser. Howard Frank Mosher’s slide show and story behind his latest book “Walking to Gatlinburg” should be very entertaining and Stephen McCauley is another one of my favorites.
We try to balance the schedule with established writers like Julia Glass and Andre Dubus III with new names like Michelle Hoover and Meg Mitchell Moore. I know that the “big names” draw people in but hopefully they are also discovering new voices. The new authors they see this year may be the next “big name” by next year!
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Also, we are participating in the Newburyport Literary Festival as as panelist in the Book Bloggers: A Conversation About Books With the People who Blog About Them. We’ll be chatting with fellow Boston-area book bloggers Boston Bibliophile, Archimedes Forgets and She Is Too Fond of Books about publishing industry, relations with authors, how we navigate everything from reviews to objectivity.
Tags: archimedes forgets, book festival, bostonbibliophile, literary festival, newburyport literary festival, Newburyport Literary Festival 2011, she is too fond of books
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