celebrate your favorite scribe
Book festivals? You'll find them everywhere -- from Ann Arbor to Amelia Island and Nebraska to New Orleans. San Francisco has Litquake. New York hosts the Unicorn Writers Conference. Oregon offers Wordstock. Of course, let's be honest: Not everyone loves every book. But specific authors? Specific books? Specific characters? Those passions are boundless, whether it's Langston Hughes, Pride and Prejudice, or a particular boy wizard. So how does an aspiring traveler best declare one's love? By rubbing shoulders with fellow fans, naturally. By making a pilgrimage for an homage. So there are gatherings for those with refined tastes, be it a love of Gatsby or Gandalf
Each gathering has its own emphasis, its own quirks. The Jules Verne Festival, held annually in both Paris and Los Angeles, is a film festival described as "where Science meets Fiction." Horror films and goth culture are paramount every October at the Bram Stoker Festival in Whitby, U.K. Bangkok's Unfolding Kafka Festival celebrates artistic trends in contemporary art. In Medellin, Colombia, the annual Gabo Fest (as in Garbriel Garcia Marquez) honors the best in journalism from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. The Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium at the Mississippi University for Women is a opportunity for Southern writers and scholars to present their work. The Jane Austen Festival (September, Bath, U.K.) includes a Costumed Charity Promenade. And Hemingway Days (July, Key West, Florida) features an annual look-alike contest.
A great many character-based experiences are incongruously placed. Three times a year you can be part of a solve-it-yourself experience known as Sherlock Holmes Weekend... in Cape May, New Jersey. Baltimore was Edgar Allen Poe's haunt, but every October in Phoenix, Arizona, PoeFest includes a seance and an every-20-minutes reading of "The Raven." Harry Potter may have U.K. origins and settings, but in North America Potterheads can indulge themselves at the Festival of Wizardry (September, Blythe, Ontario)... and the Harry Potter Festival (June, Aurora, Illinois)... and Diagon Valley (October, Roanoke, Virginia). While there are countless holiday Charles Dickens celebrations from Utah to the U.K., there is an annual Dickens Festival in Riverside, California, each February. And despite all of its iconic New York-ness, the Great Gatsby Festival takes over California's South Lake Tahoe every August. Of course, more often, the location is eminently appropriate. National Tom Sawyer Days (including the National Fence Painting Contest) in Mark Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, has been a tradition for more than six decades.
As spring blooms, so do literary possibilities, including the Robert Frost Poetry Festival in Key West (he wintered there for more than a dozen years), the Tolstoy Weekend Festival (Tula, Russia), the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale Festival (Hanau, Germany), and the Prairie Days Festival at the Little House on the Prairie Museum in Independence, Kansas. In the summer months, you can trek to Torquay in the U.K. for the International Agatha Christie Festival; to Odense, Denmark, for the Hans Christian Andersen Festival; to Sauk Centre, Minnesota, for Sinclair Lewis Days; to Amherst, Massachusetts for the Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon; or to Greenville, Maine, for the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Festival. And the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the city of Ashland is one of countless Shakespeare shindigs that, as always, put the Bard in a class by himself. In autumn, you can honor Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburgh), Ray Bradbury (Waukegan, Illinois), C.S. Lewis (Petoskey, Michigan), Jack Kerouac (Lowell, Massachusetts), Langston Hughes (New York City), Carl Sagan (Pittsburgh), Kurt Vonnegut (Indianapolis), and Frank Baum (at the Midwest OzFest in Tinley Park, IL). Winter brings the Roald Dahl Festival (Groningen, the Netherlands), the Seuss Festival (Bedford, Texas), the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival, and Burns Night in Scotland (celebrating poet Robert Burns).
Often you'll find specific themes about particular authors. For instance, the 2018 Steinbeck Festival (held in May in Salinas, California) celebrated John Steinbeck's female characters. The 2017 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference (July, Oxford, Mississippi) focused on William Faulkner and money, while the theme for the Pat Conroy Literary Festival (October, Beaufort, South Carolina) was the author's legacy as student and teacher. And in February 2018 at New York's Hayden Planetarium, the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate focused on the consequences of a future with artificial intelligence. There are book-specific celebrations, too: Bloomsday, every June 16 in Dublin, is the culmination of a two-week festival, drawing James Joyce fans in period attire who reenact Leopold Bloom's wanderings. For Herman Melville fans, the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts, hosts an annual Moby-Dick Marathon in January. And J.R.R. Tolkien lovers are in heaven at the Middle Earth Festival each September in Birmingham, U.K.
As Tolkien, himself, wrote, "Not all those who wander are lost." So click on a link below to find adventure in an author festival.
Each gathering has its own emphasis, its own quirks. The Jules Verne Festival, held annually in both Paris and Los Angeles, is a film festival described as "where Science meets Fiction." Horror films and goth culture are paramount every October at the Bram Stoker Festival in Whitby, U.K. Bangkok's Unfolding Kafka Festival celebrates artistic trends in contemporary art. In Medellin, Colombia, the annual Gabo Fest (as in Garbriel Garcia Marquez) honors the best in journalism from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. The Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium at the Mississippi University for Women is a opportunity for Southern writers and scholars to present their work. The Jane Austen Festival (September, Bath, U.K.) includes a Costumed Charity Promenade. And Hemingway Days (July, Key West, Florida) features an annual look-alike contest.
A great many character-based experiences are incongruously placed. Three times a year you can be part of a solve-it-yourself experience known as Sherlock Holmes Weekend... in Cape May, New Jersey. Baltimore was Edgar Allen Poe's haunt, but every October in Phoenix, Arizona, PoeFest includes a seance and an every-20-minutes reading of "The Raven." Harry Potter may have U.K. origins and settings, but in North America Potterheads can indulge themselves at the Festival of Wizardry (September, Blythe, Ontario)... and the Harry Potter Festival (June, Aurora, Illinois)... and Diagon Valley (October, Roanoke, Virginia). While there are countless holiday Charles Dickens celebrations from Utah to the U.K., there is an annual Dickens Festival in Riverside, California, each February. And despite all of its iconic New York-ness, the Great Gatsby Festival takes over California's South Lake Tahoe every August. Of course, more often, the location is eminently appropriate. National Tom Sawyer Days (including the National Fence Painting Contest) in Mark Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, has been a tradition for more than six decades.
As spring blooms, so do literary possibilities, including the Robert Frost Poetry Festival in Key West (he wintered there for more than a dozen years), the Tolstoy Weekend Festival (Tula, Russia), the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale Festival (Hanau, Germany), and the Prairie Days Festival at the Little House on the Prairie Museum in Independence, Kansas. In the summer months, you can trek to Torquay in the U.K. for the International Agatha Christie Festival; to Odense, Denmark, for the Hans Christian Andersen Festival; to Sauk Centre, Minnesota, for Sinclair Lewis Days; to Amherst, Massachusetts for the Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon; or to Greenville, Maine, for the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Festival. And the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the city of Ashland is one of countless Shakespeare shindigs that, as always, put the Bard in a class by himself. In autumn, you can honor Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburgh), Ray Bradbury (Waukegan, Illinois), C.S. Lewis (Petoskey, Michigan), Jack Kerouac (Lowell, Massachusetts), Langston Hughes (New York City), Carl Sagan (Pittsburgh), Kurt Vonnegut (Indianapolis), and Frank Baum (at the Midwest OzFest in Tinley Park, IL). Winter brings the Roald Dahl Festival (Groningen, the Netherlands), the Seuss Festival (Bedford, Texas), the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival, and Burns Night in Scotland (celebrating poet Robert Burns).
Often you'll find specific themes about particular authors. For instance, the 2018 Steinbeck Festival (held in May in Salinas, California) celebrated John Steinbeck's female characters. The 2017 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference (July, Oxford, Mississippi) focused on William Faulkner and money, while the theme for the Pat Conroy Literary Festival (October, Beaufort, South Carolina) was the author's legacy as student and teacher. And in February 2018 at New York's Hayden Planetarium, the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate focused on the consequences of a future with artificial intelligence. There are book-specific celebrations, too: Bloomsday, every June 16 in Dublin, is the culmination of a two-week festival, drawing James Joyce fans in period attire who reenact Leopold Bloom's wanderings. For Herman Melville fans, the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts, hosts an annual Moby-Dick Marathon in January. And J.R.R. Tolkien lovers are in heaven at the Middle Earth Festival each September in Birmingham, U.K.
As Tolkien, himself, wrote, "Not all those who wander are lost." So click on a link below to find adventure in an author festival.
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