Zoë Rodriguez
"Erosion: Essays of Undoing" is the latest book by author and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams.
Despite everything that’s happened in 2020 — a global pandemic, civil unrest, environmental calamities and an overall heightened state of uncertainty — Conor Moran and his team never considered canceling this year’s three-day Wisconsin Book Festival fall celebration.
“It never entered our minds,” says Moran, the festival’s director for the past eight years. “The Madison Public Library Foundation [which oversees the festival] has been very eager to make sure we continue to offer free cultural events.”
Indeed, we might need the Wisconsin Book Festival now more than ever. It just looks a little different.
The festival has gone virtual, with 27 authors appearing at 16 free online events (courtesy of the live-event platform Crowdcast) slated for Oct. 15-17. Although considerably scaled down from previous years, the festival’s lineup reflects our collective state of mind.
Celebrated poet Nikki Giovanni, a seven-time winner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Image Award and the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, will discuss her book Make Me Rain, which unapologetically declares her Black heritage pride while also exploring racism and white nationalism. She will be interviewed Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. by Kiese Laymon, whose memoir Heavy landed on many “best books of 2018” lists.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami will share details from her new memoir, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America, on Oct. 17 at 1 p.m. In the book, Lalami details her own journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen while exploring the rights, liberties and protections traditionally associated with American citizenship. Jacob Tobia, a Los Angeles-based gender nonconforming writer, producer and performer, chronicles a different type of transformation in Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story. Tobia will discuss their bestselling memoir about gender-related trauma, healing and self-acceptance Oct. 16 at 8:30 p.m.
Journalist Paola Ramos, who was deputy director of Hispanic media for the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, will share details from her empowering cross-country travelogue, Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity, on Oct. 17 at 2:30 p.m. Her journey took her to Milwaukee, where she met a group of musicians whose beats help reassure others that they belong. And award-winning author and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams, who in Erosion: Essays of Undoing examines the many forms of erosion Americans face today — including democracy, science, trust and even compassion — will close the three-day celebration Oct. 17 at 8:30 p.m.
The featured works are top of mind, says Moran. “These are the books that are getting published right now. And this is what a lot of the national conversation is about.”
Other highlights represent ways in which Moran was able to leverage the kind of opportunities virtual events encourage, such as creating compelling author pairings in conversation with moderators who have ties to Wisconsin.
David Goddard
Author Kiley Reid is a Booker Prize nominee for the novel "Such a Fun Age."
Angie Kim, winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel (Miracle Creek) and Booker Prize nominee Kiley Reid (Such a Fun Age), for instance, will participate in a conversation with 2019 University of Wisconsin-Madison MFA alum Dantiel Moniz (Oct. 15 at 8:30 p.m.).
Edward Ball and Robert P. Jones, who are white, will join Wisconsin Public Radio’s Kealey Bultena on Oct. 16 at 7 p.m. to talk about white supremacy and how it haunts the provocative pages of their new books, Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy and White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.
And Brian Greene, director of Columbia University’s Center for Theoretical Physics and author of Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe, and Janna Levin, a Guggenheim Fellow and author of Black Hole Survival Guide, will talk about the cosmos with Eric Wilcots, dean of UW-Madison’s College of Letters & Science (Oct. 17 at 7 p.m.).
Over the years, the Wisconsin Book Festival has evolved into a year-round production, culminating every fall with a packed four-day schedule of live events held at the Madison Central Library and other downtown venues.
But with the coronavirus pandemic canceling just about every arts event across the country, the final in-person Wisconsin Book Festival event of 2020 was held at A Room of One’s Own on March 12 with novelist Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life and a former UW-Madison graduate student.
A little more than three weeks later, on April 4, “Celebrate Poetry!” featuring Madison poet laureate Angela Trudell Vasquez, Wisconsin poet laureate Margaret Rozga, Milwaukee poet laureate Dasha Kelly, and five of their predecessors marked the Wisconsin Book Festival’s Crowdcast debut.
It was no longer a question of whether online events were going to happen, but how the festival was going to make them a success, says Moran. By the end of the year, he adds, the Wisconsin Book Festival will have hosted 51 stand-alone events (not including those associated with the three-day fall celebration), compared to about 40 in previous years.
Attendance at virtual events can fluctuate, just the same as it does for in-person events, but Moran says 40 online viewers is typical and “we’ve been seeing a lot more than that” at some events. More than 1,000 logged on in June to listen to rising political star Stacy Abrams discuss her book, Our Time Is Now, with Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
Virtual offerings also have provided opportunities for readers from around the world to access locally hosted events and allowed big-name authors such as Salman Rushdie (Quichotte) and Sarah Broom (The Yellow House) to make online appearances under the Wisconsin Book Festival banner.
“They were probably a little less likely to come here in person, even under normal circumstances,” Moran says. “But this way, they still were able to participate in the festival.”
While some book festivals around the country have expanded their number of days or offered simultaneous online author appearances this year, this year’s Wisconsin Book Festival will not offer simultaneous events, which was common during previous in-person festivals.
“Once we came up with a model and figured out how to run everything on my side — I’ve definitely gotten a master class in digital events production, that’s for sure — we looked at what our capabilities are as an organization and then determined that we could put on one great event at any given time,” he says.
The Wisconsin Book Festival is not planning on hosting in-person author appearances anytime soon and will follow all city, county and state mandates, says Moran. He hopes next year’s fall celebration can feature in-person events but says “we’ll see.” Regardless of what the future holds, virtual author events likely are here to stay in one form or another.
“I think that some version of streaming will continue to exist for book festival events in perpetuity,” Moran says. “We’ve seen gains in terms of accessibility for people and being able to extend our reach. We have attendees coming from multiple continents for almost every single event we’ve put on. People are still interested in seeing authors talk about their books, and we couldn’t be happier with the amount of attention and support people are giving to the festival. It feels like it’s working and is something people are really looking for.”
For more coverage of authors with Wisconsin ties, visit here.
