Last weekend was a local Lit Fest--it was a most welcome event since author visits tend to be few and far between here. The last Litfest was years ago, so I've been looking forward to this one for months. The theme was "Give a Damn: The Difference Literature Makes" and while the festival was fairly small, there was a nice variety of authors with novels and nonfiction writers in the morning and poetry in the afternoon. I wasn't able to stay for the whole event unfortunately but I was happy to listen to the conversations, readings and Q&As. Both local and national authors were on hand and as much as I wish I could have bought everyone's books, I managed to restrain myself and took away just two of the most recently published books as well as a couple of copies of a regional literary magazine I had not previously come across.
There were two panel discussions, the first was facilitated by Ilana Masad who has a book coming out in the coming year. Authors Carson Vaughan, Andrea Wilson (she is an editor now) and Sarah Elgatian spoke about their work, about what influenced their writing and the process they went through in writing and publishing. I finally got my hands on Carson Vaughan's Zoo Nebraska, which my library bought early on but then went into circulation and hasn't been on the shelf long enough for me to grab it and which has gotten a lot of good reviews. Now I have my own signed copy. I believe the book started as a thesis project, which in the end took something like a decade to research and write. The inspiration for his writing came from a small news event that was covered nationally but only a small mention in the big papers--four chimpanzees escaped a small town roadside menagerie that resulted in three of the animals being killed. It's the story behind the story that Vaughan undertakes in this book.
The second panel was a discussion between Jennie Melamed and Kassandra Montag facilitated by Lydia Kang, a local YA novelist who has a number of books on her backlist and another coming next year. Jennie Melamed is an author from Washington and whose book has received a string of awards. My library has a copy and it would be fun now to read it in tandem with Kassandra's just published, After the Flood which is a dystopian novel set in the near future and in a now flooded Nebraska. Both books sound somewhat eerie, though appealing with more feminine slants to them. Lithub published an article last week about the myths that have inspired Kassandra Montag's novel.
Rounding out the weekend was Hamilton, which I have been literally waiting years to see. I bought my ticket well over a year ago! And poof, in just a weekend it is over. I loved it and want to see it again. Is it a surprise that now I want to read about Hamilton and his wife and that period in general?