The West Virginia Book Festival: The End

The Book Festival is over for another year and I am kind of sad to see it end. It is a cray time for for me as I try to wear two hats all weekend: first hat is as a library staffer who has responsibilities for the giant used book sale, the second is the storyteller hat I wear when working in the storytelling guild's booth and performing at our festival events. It was easier for me this year because another teller took over responsibility for organizing tellers for the festival; all I had to do was be there for my telling time and work a while in the booth.

For guild members, the Book Festival is a time for us to get together to tell stories, meet listeners and talk to each other. Facetime is a rare opportunity for us, although we are finding more opportunities to be together as we add guild events to our annual calendar.

Storytellers: Donna Wilson, Suzi Whaples, Otto Ross, Paige Tighe, me, Bill Hairston, Keith Maynard and Katie Ross. This picture was taken on Sunday morning, so a few tellers had already left to head home. Notice that I brought my rocker from the porch with me? I planned to be comfortable when I had time to sit a while. It was apopular spot when I wasn't in it, too.

The used book sale is always a big deal for me. I like to help set it up on Friday, especially the Collector's Corner. That's also where I do most of my shopping, because there are so many books that relate to my interests in folklore, stories, and history.

Visitors to our booth browsed my materials but often seemed to be more interested in the free candy, like this lady. I did sell several copies of my new CD and met many interesting people throughout the weekend.

Across the aisle from our booth, WV Writers had an active booth too. I like having them as neighbors because I'm in both groups and writers are just good people to hang out with. It was encouraging to see such strong interest in the writers guild. Our booth stayed steadily busy all weekend. although sales were not as strong as in the past, I did make several good contacts for future performances, and the storytelling guild gained two new members.

Today I'm tired but not exhausted and a little sad to see the time with my storytelling friends be over, at least for now. Some of us will be together again in November at the WVU Mountaineer Week storytelling concert, so I'm looking ahead to that.

The quiet before the storm. The book sale is set up and ready on Friday.

It was a lot of fun, I'm very tired, and it's over.



The West Virginia Book Festival concluded today. It was a good event, not nearly as well attended as last year, which is undoubtedly due to the price of gas and the uncertainty over the economy.



People were lined up outside at 7:30 am, waiting to get inside to the giant used book sale.

When the doors opened at 8am, the crowds ran--literally--into the sale room. Amazing! People running to get at the books! Where did they head first? The West Virginia books, of course.

A crowd stayed in that area for most of the morning until there was little left to be purchased from that section.


I worked in the collector's area for a couple hours and enjoyed watching people making their selections. I love these old books best. Aren't the covers pretty?


I left the book sale at 10am to put on my storytelling hat and join the storytelling guild's booth. We had an opportunity to do a live recording of the guild's storytelling concert this year. Bob Webb came with his equipment and after a bit of testing we were ready to go. While Bob worked on the sound quality, I taught the audience the participation parts of a song and story I planned to use for the recording. When it was time to tape, the audience performed brilliantly! It was so much fun. I'm not sure if I will get to use both stories and the song on the final CD, but I hope so because the telling and the audience were perfect.

It turned out to be a long set, almost 2 hours long. Afterwards, I MC'ed for our featured teller, Donna Washington of North Carolina. Donna is high energy, a lesson in how to involve and interact with audiences. Her stories and her performances were popular with our audiences. The guild's panel discussion was not a success; low attendance means we probably won't try one again at the festival anytime soon.

Tonight I'm tired but satisfied with a good weekend. The firepit provided a welcome place to relax, renew and remember another great festival.

Things Upcoming

It's coming into a whirlwind of busyness (and business) for me.

First up: the Storytelling Guild will get together tonight to set up our booth at the West Virginia Book Festival. Friends, if you've never been to the Festival you're missing out on a fun, free good time. Lots of authors (featured this year is Richard Paul Evans, and Davit McAteer who wrote the book about Monongah), along with many, many others, and workshops, performances, etc.

Tomorrow morning I'll be at the Festival bright and early to help with the annual library book sale. It's huge this year; over twice as many books as last year, and tons more in the Collector's corner (my favorite part of the sale). Since I helped set up today, I got 5 books for free, and could buy the others that I wanted. So I have a box full of books in my car and will have to figure out what has to go when I get home because I tend to get over-run by books.

Then the Storytelling Guild will have its Children's Storytelling Concert at noon, followed by a performance by our featured teller, Donna Washington of North Carolina. After that, we'll have a panel discussion on telling stories to children. Bob Webb will be recording the concert for us, and we hope it will be worth making into a CD. Keep your fingers crossed for us! And come to listen if you can--it's free :-)

THEN we go to dinner, and hightail it to Ripley to put on a Ghost Stories and Music Concert at the Alpine Theatre. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for kids; come in costume and get a treat! We'll have refreshments too, so it should be a great time for everyone.

Next week I have storytelling events on Monday evening, all day Thursday and all day Friday, and Saturday morning. Thank goodness I have the week off from work! Three schools, a library and an Elderhostel are the venues for the week's storytelling.

Next week is quiet, except for my granddaughter's wedding on Saturday; then the following week storytelling picks up again with another Elderhostel performance, an all-day event on Oct 30, evening event that same day (more about that in another post), and an afternoon event on the 31st.

Somewhere in there I need to find time to make apple butter and get arthroscopic surgery on my #@&*! right knee. That should be an interesting feat. Oh, and go to work every now and then too!

Book Festival Day 2

(No photos today--I forgot my camera)

I thought I was tired last night!

It felt luxurious to sleep in until 9am today. The ringing phone woke me--it was son #5, Tommy, calling from Germany. We have a system: he calls when he has time to talk, and I call him right back to save outrageous charges on his cell phone.

He sounded great, full of plans for the future. He's in the Air Force, but has gotten into health and fitness and is studying to be a personal trainer when he gets out. It's too funny to hear this son, the pickiest of eaters when young, extolling the virtues of chicken sprinkled with pepper and flax seed, steamed broccoli, and other very healthful foods. I'm proud of him and the efforts he's making on his own to learn about nutrition. And he's learning to cook too!

Grandson Jared and I made it to the book festival by noon and manned the booth for a while. A wide variety of folks stopped to talk, sign up to receive more information about storytelling, and pick up brochures.

I've created a new brochure called "So You Want to Be a Storyteller" that was popular with booth visitors--I took 50 with me on Saturday, and had only 3 left at the end of the day. I made more when I got home. I also spiral-bound more copies of my ghost stories book--I started with the only four I had left, and was out of those early in the afternoon. The storytelling guild's membership form needed revision too, and I made brochures for that. So I burned the midnight oil Saturday night, getting everything printed, bound and ready to go. (Which is another reason why sleeping until 9am felt so good.)

Today we had the Storytellers Concert. Five tellers agreed to perform, and I was MC. The turnout was disappointing, only 15 people, but then attendance at the festival seemed to be down in general, especially today. And Robert San Souci, a well-known children's author, was presenting at the same time as the concert, so we had heavy competition for audience.

But even though the audience was small, the telling was excellent. Fred Powers started our set with a riveting coal mining story. He brought many coal mining tools for display which added to the atmosphere as he crawled into the room in his miner's outfit. I sang the ballad "WV Coal Mining Disaster" after Fred's story as a tribute to miners and the women who love them.

Suzi "Mama" Whaples followed with a new story with a lot of punch--a personal story about an encounter with a homeless woman years ago. Her point was made with grace and few words, no preaching but a truth so evident that all of us felt the power of her tale.

Donna Wilson demonstrated the art of the traditional tale with her telling of "Old Dry Frye," one of my favorite Appalachian tales. Her story reminded me a local humorous story by Delmar Hutton of Jackson County that is supposedly true, and absolutely hilarious. I told that tale and then we moved on to Michael Kasony-O'Malley, our guest performer from Columbus, Ohio. His personal story of making chocolate chip cookies and a disastrous science experiment had us all in tears with laughter.

I did a "science" ballad after Michael, "The Bricklayer's Lament," surely as much about physics as anything!

Karen Vuranch ended our set with a fantastic telling of another traditional tale, "The Two Old Women's Bet." Too funny! And a fitting tale to end the concert.

Another two hours in the booth talking to visitors, and then it was time to take down our displays. This is the hardest part for me--we're tired and drained, but the booth must be disassembled and the car loaded up for the trip home. Larry calls the car my little pickup and he's not far wrong. By the time we'd stopped for groceries, the car was completely full from the front seats to the back bumper.

Of course, I bought some new books, and a DVD on the process of coal mining. I want to learn more about mining and I am looking forward to watching the DVD. I now have a big stack of books to read and review, and will be posting the reviews as soon as I can.

West Virginia Book Festival

It's coming! This weekend, October 13 and 14, at the Charleston Civic Center in Charleston, WV.

With Karen Vuranch and Sarah Kezman at the storytellers booth in 2005

What is it? Books, authors, used book sale, publishers, workshops, poets, storytellers, kids' activities, Dance Dance Revolution at the Teen Zone, Storybook Parade, and lots more. This event is a blast for anyone who likes to read, write, listen or have fun.

I'll be there, with other storytellers, at the West Virginia Storytelling Guild's booth. There are sessions on storytelling on Saturday and Sunday, and a storytelling concert on Sunday at 2:00pm.

For a complete schedule, contact information, directions and anything else you might want to know about the festival, go to the festival website.

See you there!