{"id":81699,"date":"2024-10-02T09:37:36","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T14:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=81699"},"modified":"2024-10-02T09:37:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T14:37:38","slug":"annual-kansas-book-festival-delights-for-readers-writers-and-musicians-alike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=81699","title":{"rendered":"Annual Kansas Book Festival delights for readers, writers, and musicians alike"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By ADIA REYNOLDS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Tiger Media Network<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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\u2019Connor (Blues music), [and] Kyler Carpenter and Kid Performers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Attendees were invited to clap along to the songs they knew\u2014if their hands weren\u2019t full with any of the gourmet food truck delicacies accessible on-demand throughout the festival. Performers Wald and O\u2019Connor were also available at the \u201cHidden Histories of Blues\u201d panel where they discussed musical history as it related to their novels.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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\u2019s worth of tightly packed author panels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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 \u201cNYTimes Bestseller,\u201d \u201cHugo Award Winner,\u201d and even \u201cGrammy Award Winner\u201d in the case of authors who advertised their musical talents first and foremost.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The moderator of \u201cHow the 80s Rocked Us,\u201d a panel about writing and nostalgia, stated, \u201cI want to read poetry in a bar and for people to listen. Poetry should be accessible.\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSometimes you\u2019re reading for story and sometimes you\u2019re reading for art,\u201d said Kij Johnson\u2014Hugo and Nebula Award winning author of \u201cThe Privilege of the Happy Ending\u201d among other titles.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reading for art, or reading to learn writing, is a fine-tuned skill many writers at the festival praise and claim to practice themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While some authors have turned to social media for networking, Mason passionately declared a longing for what he called, \u201crock star poetry.\u201d 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\u2019s Kansas Book Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":81700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,11],"tags":[15763,15867,1602],"class_list":["post-81699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","tag-adia-reynolds","tag-book-festival","tag-kansas-book-festival"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/KS-Book-Festival.jpg?fit=611%2C294&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81699"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81702,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81699\/revisions\/81702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/81700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}