Southern Festival of Books

[jmduke]

Looks like the book festival is headed to Nashville permanently. Guess we'll need our own Mid-South literary gathering (if you want something done right, do it yourself) as our area isn't exactly hurting for good authors or literary tradition. What gets me are some of the comments made about staging the event in Memphis. I did find the director's tone a bit off-putting implying Memphis was "too far away" and the event "didn't work urbanistically" here, whatever that means. http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/...-book-fest-web/

[Rural King]

That is a big let down to hear that Memphis was not able to stay in the rotation, but at the end of the day I suppose we were lucky to get the chance to have it hosted in Memphis since it was not originally what they planned to do when they started the festival back in 1989. I also agree the tone of director was a tad off putting.

I think your suggestion that Memphis should create it's own Mid-South Book Festival might have some "legs" if the right persons and organizations got involved to see about making it a reality. Memphis is at the heart of the Mid-South and should be able to pull such an event for the region. There is just to much literary tradition, culture, and history in the Mid-South for it not to be looked and considered by civic leaders IMO.

[Clobber]

Have folks from Oxford collaborate with some of the local organizations -- the Memphis Public Library just received the highest award in the nation for libraries. If there's an interest those are the people to get something done. And do it either downtown or Midtown.