By ADIA REYNOLDS
Tiger Media Network
On Saturday, the Kansas Book Festival was hosted at Washburn University in Topeka and celebrated 13 years of expressing a common love for reading, writing, and live music.
Over five hours of scheduled musicians performed as a part of the outdoor market section, including Topeka Suzuki Strings (children on strings), Zydeco Tougeau (Louisiana-style dance music), Sally and the Hurts (Americana roots music), Jed Zeplin (Bluegrass music), Elijah Wald and Patrick O’Connor (Blues music), [and] Kyler Carpenter and Kid Performers.
Attendees were invited to clap along to the songs they knew—if their hands weren’t full with any of the gourmet food truck delicacies accessible on-demand throughout the festival. Performers Wald and O’Connor were also available at the “Hidden Histories of Blues” panel where they discussed musical history as it related to their novels.
Books, as far as the eye could see. A sea of pages decorated the university grounds and parking lot where the events were hosted. At each table stood authors and publishers eager to discuss their works and potentially sell signed copies to excited attendees. But the Kansas Book Festival went beyond a mere selling point for authors to hawk their wares. The Kansas Book Festival also provided a day’s worth of tightly packed author panels.
In these, authors discussed their inspirations, read excerpts, and take questions from crowd members. These panels were stocked with debut and award-winning authors alike, some of which had earned honorifics such as “NYTimes Bestseller,” “Hugo Award Winner,” and even “Grammy Award Winner” in the case of authors who advertised their musical talents first and foremost.
The moderator of “How the 80s Rocked Us,” a panel about writing and nostalgia, stated, “I want to read poetry in a bar and for people to listen. Poetry should be accessible.” Together panelists Nebraska State Poet Matt Mason and Kansas Poet Dennis Etzel Jr. reminded everyone that poetry and creative writing were once the primary forms of storytelling. But though less popular, they should not be viewed as a dead art. The art of fiction is still very much alive and breathing, answering questions and sharing their love for literature in festival panels just like the ones available at the Kansas Book Fest.
“Sometimes you’re reading for story and sometimes you’re reading for art,” said Kij Johnson—Hugo and Nebula Award winning author of “The Privilege of the Happy Ending” among other titles.
Reading for art, or reading to learn writing, is a fine-tuned skill many writers at the festival praise and claim to practice themselves.
Johnson explains that writing is a person on a quest to discover the line between immersion and estrangement. Writers are an essential component of everything the festival aims to achieve each year, that being an increase in readership for local or neighboring state authors. As such, discussions of writing techniques and lifestyles inevitably arose. These allowed crowd members a peek into the often enigmatic lives of their favorite authors.
While some authors have turned to social media for networking, Mason passionately declared a longing for what he called, “rock star poetry.” Rock star poets and poetry enthusiasts to go out into the world and bring about a future filled with creative writing and active readers such as what was found at this year’s Kansas Book Festival.