Conor Moran, director of the Wisconsin Book Festival
Director Conor Moran says people have been tuning in from all over the world to the book fest's events.
Like everything else, the Wisconsin Book Festival went into quarantine in mid-March. But it did not go dark. In fact, attendance at its ongoing events — virtual ones for now — has been holding steady, says Conor Moran, festival director.
“We have seen a slight uptick,” says Moran. “Now whether it’s statistically significant, I don’t know.”
Moran says a final decision has not been made on the festival’s scheduled October event in Madison, but he is not optimistic. “We are still evaluating, but looking even at the [Gov. Tony Evers’] Badger Bounce Back plan, I think it would be presumptuous to think we’d be able to gather in the style and numbers we were accustomed to. Because of that, we are planning on having an extension of what we’ve been doing for the last two months at least through the end of 2020.”
When the Safer at Home order was put in place, Moran started looking around for a platform to host author events. He settled on Crowdcast. He likes that the sessions are recorded and easily available for replay and not “lost to the ether.” The platform is also interactive and offers good analytics.
He learned, for instance, that people from around the world have been watching the book fest’s virtual events. “We don’t know why people are watching from Dublin or Santiago,” he says. “But they found out about us and they are watching and participating in the chat.
“We have had something like a dozen countries represented,” he adds. “I can assure you I’m not doing much international marketing of the book festival. It’s just incredible.”
Crowdcast might explain some of the reach. The platform allows users to simply type “books” in the search engine to find all hosted events that are book-related. Moran also suspects that Madison expats continue to be connected to the book festival and might be tuning in.
Moran says the unprecedented shutdown caused by COVID-19 has brought book festival organizers from around the country together in new collaborations. One he is most excited about is a June 4 virtual appearance by Salman Rushdie, who will discuss his 2019 novel, Quichotte. Moran says he had been working for a while to try to get Rushdie to Madison, but the stars were not aligning on a date. Now Rushdie does not have to fly to four different locales and will likely have at least four times the audience.
“It’s going to be a wonderful collaborative event,” says Moran. “I am thrilled.”
Another example of an event that might not have happened were it still business as usual: An interview with Sarah Broom, author of The Yellow House, which last year won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize.
Moran says Broom is on tour for the paperback release of The Yellow House in July, but that is not prime time for scheduling events in Madison; the summer (and good weather) is just too fleeting. But now the fest will be hosting a conversation with Broom and Lisa Lucas, executive director of the National Book Foundation, on July 14 at 7 p.m. “It was one of the best books of last year…and now we get to talk about it with people in the highest echelons of publishing,” he says.
The result of a collaboration with partners closer to home (Madison College and Dane County Library Service) is the May 19 appearance by Linda Sarsour, co-organizer of the Women’s March and the author of We Are Not Here To Be Bystanders. Originally scheduled to appear at the Central Library, Sarsour will be on Crowdcast.
Despite the hard economic times brought on by COVID-19, Moran says that the fest remains on “pretty solid footing.”
He says the festival continues to have “great support” from sponsors and its partners, the Madison Public Library Foundation and Madison Public Library. “The support from decision-makers and the public has been just extraordinary and shows just how vital the festival is to people.”
While there are qualitative benefits to live events — feelings of intimacy and community — there are practical advantages to attending virtual events, says Moran. You don’t have to figure out travel time or parking or child care. And if you can’t watch live at 7 p.m., you can watch the replay at 9:30 p.m. when the kids are in bed.
“Coming to the book fest is just as easy as watching something on Netflix,” says Moran, “and you get to see the highest-level authors talking about the most current books.”
