Early on September 23, Andy Hill, Claire Lee, and I headed to Winston-Salem for the 18th annual Bookmarks Festival of Books and Authors on behalf of Technica.
Bookmarks, a literary arts nonprofit, was established in 2004 in tandem with the annual Bookmarks Festival of Books and Authors. The eponymous bookstore opened in 2017 in downtown Winston-Salem, NC (just an hour drive from Technica’s offices in Carrboro).
While Tropical Storm Ophelia kept the attendance lower than previous years, spirits were high, and the festival took over more than six blocks of downtown Winston-Salem with booths, food trucks, and the various buildings hosting speaker events. It started as a chilly, rainy Saturday, and turned quite pleasant by the afternoon, with people milling about from 9 am to 5 pm.
Technica’s booth was situated among other vendors, authors, universities, and local organizations. The festival featured over 20 speaking events that hosted over 50 authors, including Celeste Ng, Jason Mott, Katherine Applegate, and Jose Antonio Vargas, not including the independent authors who also set up their own booths to share their work.
I attended the Saturday morning keynote: Celeste Ng in conversation with Jason Mott about writing books that expound upon the human condition at large, sometimes narrowing the lens to explore their own identities as a Chinese American woman and a Black American man, respectively, through their characters. Jason Mott explained that the story of an author on book tour that he narrates in his book, Hell of a Book, came from his own experiences on book tours, constantly navigating his being a Black man in various interactions, even when race wasn’t the “point” of the book. Celeste Ng noticed the rise in anti-Asian American violence during COVID-19 and put her observations into her book Our Missing Hearts, noting that the events spurred by anti-Asian sentiment in the book are not far from current reality.
I also attended the panel, “Women Writing Women,” a multi-genre conversation with Camryn Garrett, Halle Hill, and Sadeqa Johnson that was filled to the brim with insightful comments from all three women about their process and journey, writing with empathy and kindness about complex women characters.
Claire attended the “All the Love, Forever” panel on romance books from Forever imprint, with authors Abby Jimenez, Dominic Lim, and Julie Soto, as well as “A Renaissance of Thought,” a Young Adult sampler with Kalynn Bayron, Emery Lord, R. Eric Thomas, and Ibi Zoboi. Claire reflected, “It’s inspiring to be in the same room as published authors, whether you’ve read their work or not. The authors on the YA panel I attended were all enthusiastic in demonstrating how their young protagonists are able to go through journeys of self-discovery, which may help readers identify with those characters and learn about their own lives.”
We noticed that whoever stopped by the Technica booth, both readers and writers alike, had an appreciation and interest for the world of editing, whether they enjoyed the process or not. Among them were an inspiring number of young authors who were eager to pursue publication of their written or in-progress work. Whether a reader, writer, editor, and/or already-published author, everyone had something to share within this community of bibliophiles.
Andy chatted with many people who walked by the Technica booth: “Not everyone at the Bookmarks Festival is a writer, but the event draws a lot of people looking to share their work and connect with other creatives in the community. These are the people who really make it happen! It was such a treat to hear authors discuss their original ideas and the steps they were taking to get their writing into the world.”
The festival demonstrated Bookmarks’ mission and vision [https://www.bookmarksnc.org/about] of bringing together a “community where the power of the book brings forth connection and belonging for every person.” We were delighted by meeting a part of this local community and connecting with lovers of the written word.
By: Anali North Martin
Anali is a Senior Editor at Technica Editorial
