Matthew Moore: This is Ozarks at Large. I'm Matthew Moore NWA. Book fest is upon us this weekend, and this year's events include an entire day dedicated to children's literature. Rachel Stuckey Slaton and Amelia Schembra are both board members of NWA Book Fest. They joined me last week to discuss this year's festivities.
Amelia has been heading up the inaugural NWA Book Fest Kids happening on Sunday. She says a priority of the event is to highlight local children's authors.
Amelia Schembra: Give something back to the children of the community. Book Fest Kids really wanted to do this last year, and it was actually on the books to do last year. Unfortunately, it was affected by the May 2024, tornadoes. So it was canceled last year. So this is our inaugural event. We're really excited that we finally get to bring it to life, and we have a lot of really wonderful local and regional authors that are coming to the event. So we're really, really excited to highlight these authors and give them a platform where they can present their work to the children of Northwest Arkansas and share their stories.
Matthew Moore: As someone who's a father of two little ones, kids’ books mean a lot to me. It tends to be the books I read the most in this current stage of my life. We've got the classic kids books that everybody's got at their house. What does it mean to incorporate local authors and local books in a way that we can perhaps create a local canon, a local way for people to incorporate these books into their homes as well?
Amelia Schembra: I think first of all, it shows kids that you can write a book, that people you know can write books, that it doesn't have to be somebody who is sort of someone from history or someone that is a figure in your head, right? It can be somebody you know. It can be somebody that lives next door, or someone that you've known, you know in the community, it can be you know, a friend or a neighbor, it can be you.
That's one of the things that we're focusing on in the event as well. We have some local publishers and local authors who are going to have some workshops to teach children how to bring those stories in their head and put them on paper. So that's going to be really fun as well.
Just really encourage the kids to bring those stories to life and encourage them to start putting them on paper. Now, you don't have to be a grown up to write a book, right? You can start putting those things down on paper as a kid, right? You can start now. We really want to encourage that creativity, that storytelling.
Then also, I think having books that are new, that are not classic books, can really encourage diversity. Can encourage inclusion in your community, learning about other cultures, learning about other lifestyles. That's really positive, and that's how we're going to bring together our community and make it stronger and make it better.
Matthew Moore: You fit Rachel, a very unique role in this too. You're a parent, you've got some kids books in your house, I'm sure. You're also a bookseller. You're someone who sells, I'm sure, books from local folks. What does it mean to you to have this sort of opportunity to highlight and showcase some of the local kids authors here in an event like this?
Rachel Stuckey Slaton: Well, I think Amelia put it really beautifully- that sense of an empowerment that children can glean from meeting an author in person and also identifying themselves as being in a place where people are being creative. They're engaged in the literary arts, and this is like a space that they can inhabit. So I think that that's super important.
Then, finding these stories where you see yourself. I know that you and I have talked about this before, where so often kids books are kind of either a window into someone else's life or a mirror of your own life. Being able to see local authors work, and as a child, engaging with it, either as a reflection of your own experience being a kid in the Ozarks, or a window into somebody else's life that might also be here in the Ozarks or from somewhere else. That's just a very positive and empowering experience for a child.
Matthew Moore: So the second day on Sept 28 will be NWA Book Fest Kids. On the 27 will be what we're calling NWA Book Fest for grown ups, right? For folks who aren't kiddos. Tell me a little bit about this. It is the third year that this has happened. What can people expect to see that's the same as they've seen before? They'll see similar booksellers. They'll see similar styles of events there.
Rachel Stuckey Slaton: Yes, it is still a family friendly event, so bring the whole family for sure, but yes, this is really more geared towards literature written by and for adults. We will still have author readings, poetry readings, panel discussions with traditionally and indie published authors.
We will have the Big Bookish Market so all of these local makers who are going to be coming together to sell bookish, book related objects. It could be a cookie that's a really amazing, detailed cover of The Hobbit, or it could be an indie bookseller that's actually selling a physical copy of The Hobbit.
Basically, all of the booksellers that are in Northwest Arkansas, whether they have a storefront or they're a pop up or virtual, are going to be present. So we're really excited about that. We love to be able to showcase the groundswell of interest and support of this artistic space.
Matthew Moore: I'm sure for you, it's a really unique opportunity too, because you're getting a chance to interact with other people who sell books in the area. Whether it's Underbrush, whether it's Pearl’s- your store as well. Dad Suggests, are they going to be there?
Rachel Stuckey Slaton: Absolutely.
Matthew Moore: These booksellers across our region are all kind of getting to be here in one space, and you get to enjoy company in a way that you don't normally get to.
Rachel Stuckey Slaton: I feel very lucky that book people are really delightful, and we are actually friends. Like, if I know you personally and you're a bookseller, like, I probably have a text thread going with you.
But I will say, beyond what we've been doing in the past for book fest, we do have a couple new things going on. Primarily, we're doing a Bookish Bingo, which I'm really excited about. The TBR Society, which is a local book club/book event group, is going to be running Bookish Bingo.
We're also going to be doing workshops for the first time, and you can find a list of those on the website, as well as links to buy tickets. They're all really craft oriented, but geared for people who are at a whole range of their own journey with writing, whether it's I just picked up a pen to I have been published by Penguin Random House. Then we're ending the evening with an open mic that's going to be run by a group called NWA Poetry Connection.
One of the things that we noticed last year, is we wanted to end with more of that, like generative, like community spirit, I guess. And so we feel like NWA poetry is like the perfect group to end that day.
Matthew Moore: For you, Amelia, when you think about just the culmination of this whole weekend, what do you hope that families and kids can walk away from this event feeling?
Amelia Schembra: For families, what I'm really hoping that they walk away feeling is a sense of community and understanding that there is a whole literary community here in Northwest Arkansas that is ready to support you in supporting your children in their literary journey. Whether that is getting them to love reading. Whether that is supporting them in their journey, to begin writing, if that's something that they want to do, or storytelling. My daughter is an artist. So she loves to draw. She loves to draw comic books, whatever that may be.
For children, I really, really just want them to cultivate a love of reading. That is something that has been with me all of my life, ever since I was little bitty. It's been an escape for me, it's been a comfort for me, and it's something that I've been passionate my whole life about cultivating in others. If I can cultivate that in one child, then I will have done my job.
Matthew Moore: I think it can be easy as a parent to want to encourage your kid to pursue these sorts of things. Do you see and hope that perhaps the inspiration or the way that kids are inspired can also inspire a parent or inspire an adult in a kid's life to say, “Wow. Like, if my kid's interested in this, like, maybe I should give it a try too.”
Amelia Schembra: Absolutely. Yes. I think that as a society, you know, we tend to get caught up with the things, the new things that come out: the phones, and we can get distracted and things like that. Sometimes, something like this can bring us back around to something that is a simple pleasure, right? And so just coming back around to something so simple as words on a page that can make us feel something can really bring us back down to earth and make us feel grounded again. And I think that, you know, if we can see that in our child, and sometimes it can help us connect again with our children then I think that that can help a parent as well, reconnect with our children and re-cultivate that love as well.
Matthew Moore: Rachel for you, we’re in the third year of NWA Book Fest. Three years ago, four years ago perhaps when you were first dreaming about this idea. What has been unexpected in the way that you've seen this grow and what has been kind of a mission fulfilled for you?
Rachel Stuckey Slaton: Well, I can't take too much credit, because really the festival was started by Underbrush books and another local business called the Cozy Librarian, so the two leaders of those organizations really got the first one going, and then based on that success, it was turned into a nonprofit, and that's when I came on board. As a vendor that first year. It's been really cool to see where it started and then how the mission has grown.
I would say the real focus on celebrating Arkansas and regional authors has been something that I really appreciate about this event. I think it's really tempting to bring in the big, flashy names and forget how much talent is actually here in Arkansas and southern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma and Kansas. That aspect feels really important to me.
Additionally, our mission is to grow the community of people who identify as readers through gentle reading practices and celebration. And that really comes through with the Bookish Bingo and like the Maker's Market, it's all of these little connections to books that aren't specifically book books. Like you're not reading a book with someone, but you're like, in some way, engaging with the object of a book.
It's been really cool to see each year how that helps grow the audience and the attendees. But then also, I think just generally, the feeling in Northwest Arkansas that there is a big reader community, and books are like something fun that we can connect over.
Matthew Moore: There was a poll that was put out by NPR and Ipsos earlier this year that said that 51% of Americans have read a book or listened to an audio book in the past month? I think that's probably a little discouraging. It's that low of a number. Do you hope that events like this can provide an opportunity for people who might be intimidated or overwhelmed by the thought of, “just like there's so many books I don't even know where to start, that perhaps events like this can play a role in saying, like, just start with a book.”
Rachel Stuckey Slaton: It can be any book. Absolutely. The lowering the stakes of picking up a book like this is not school. You want to read about somebody riding a dragon. Guess what? We got a book for you. Like, do you like watching true crime or, like, listening to true crime podcast? Guess what? I got a book for you, and you're gonna love you're gonna love it, and it's gonna be way more immersive than that crime podcast.
It's really about just making it easy for people, bringing more people into the fold. And I think everyone benefits from that.
Amelia Schembra: If I can piggyback off that a little bit too, I think, I think that there's some shame around wanting to read things that are deemed silly or girly or for children or whatever, but it's okay. Just read what you are interested in. If you want to read an unauthorized biography of Taylor Swift or whatever, just read what's fun for you, and there's no shame around that.
You know, just have fun with it. It's supposed to be fun. It's not supposed to be painful or taxing. If you pick up a book and you don't like it, it's okay to put it down. You can start over. You don't have to have a goal. You don't have to hit 100 books a year. It's fine. You can just have fun.
Matthew Moore: Okay, so Sept 27 Sept 28 the two days of the festival. It's free. People can come in and out at their own leisure, at their own pleasure. It's happening at the Ledger in Bentonville. Any other details we need other than that?
Amelia Schembra: The schedule is up on https://www.nwabookfest.com/ so you can check out this, the whole schedule and plan your day. So if there's something you want to do in the morning and then you want to leave for a little while and come back later, you're welcome to do that.
Matthew Moore: Amelia Rachel, thank you so much for coming today. I appreciate it.
Rachel Stuckey Slaton: Thank you for inviting us.
Matthew Moore: Amelia Schembra And Rachel Stuckey Slaton are board members of NWA book fest. The festival will also feature a book swap. That means, if you have kids books at home that you've finished with and you want to swap that book for another, you can bring those books to the festival. They'll be giving away 1000 new books to kids on Sunday, courtesy of Walmart and Dad Suggests. You can find all the details for the festival at https://www.nwabookfest.com/.
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