Reading spurs the imagination, triggers contemplation and conjures new ideas, but, by nature, it is also a solitary pursuit. While it may be assumed that readers, then, comprise a solitary bunch, the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books proves these assumptions wrong.
With lines of tents featuring booksellers, publishers and agents covering the stretch of Wilson Plaza up to Dickson Court, this weekend UCLA once again welcomes approximately 130,000 book lovers to the largest book festival in the country.
“The fact that … in the course of two days, we have people who just want to come and shop for books and talk about books with people and listen to authors talk about books is wonderful and provides a great opportunity for authors … to be with their fellow writers in an environment that’s really supportive of what they do,” said Maret Orliss, the program manager for the festival.
Orliss and a committee of other Los Angeles Times staff members spend the whole year planning the festival, establishing bookseller booths for shoppers, communicating with authors and agents about speaking at panel readings and deciding which authors to invite for discussion at the festival.
“We’ve been doing this for a while now, so we know that our audience has a wide scope of interests,” Orliss said. “We’ll be looking for people with new books out, people who are happy to be in the festival, people who fit into the topic of what the panel is and who come from a perspective that will keep the panel balanced.”
When authors agree to participate, Orliss and the other Festival of Books staff members then determine the panel topics and who will speak on each panel.
For Orliss, choosing which kinds of panels to include each year proves a constant challenge.
“I would say mapping out the schedule is like a big, giant logic problem because for months we’ve been pairing people. We have to try and accommodate when we’re putting things together and also doing our best … to spread them out, so that even if there are two thingsat the same time that you’d like to go to, there’s still stuff throughout the rest of the day that will still appeal to you if you have to miss something to your particular taste,” Orliss said.
For those not interested in the scheduled panels, browsing the bookselling stands is a major draw. Kate Gale, the managing editor for Red Hen Press, a nonprofit literary press that publishes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, enjoys meeting the variety of people who visit Red Hen’s booth every year.
“Even people that might not normally be going to bookstores all the time attend,” said Gale. “There are also a lot of people who just want to know what’s happening with book publishing on the West Coast. It’s good for us to get out of the Red Hen building and be in a space like that with some very earnest readers, some very earnest writers and people who are thinking about becoming readers and writers.”
While most shoppers tend to browse for pleasure, many festival attendees specifically peruse the booths, finding opportunities to publish their own work or discover how to find an agent.
“We are always moving to discover fresh, young talent or new talent of any age,” Gale said. “When you’re approaching someone, ideally, as a young writer, you should know who they are. Do some homework first so you’re targeting the right agent or editor, and then they won’t feel like you’re wasting their time.”
For author T.C. Boyle, who has participated in the festival every year since its inception, excluding one, the opportunities at the festival for aspiring writers prove invaluable.
“If I could project back in time, I wish there had been such a festival when I was first beginning,” Boyle said. “I suppose writers can schmooze in the green room, meet agents, meet editors and anyone from the community. But aspiring writers ““ really what they need to do is be reading and writing, and maybe this kind of festival helps foster that.”
In order to foster the reading and writing that Boyle recommends, free author panels and stage readings across campus allow readers and writers to discover new authors and hear the words of favorite authors. On both days of the festival, three to four authors in each panel speak about a current event or a specific fiction or poetry topic.
Ann Packer, author of the bestselling novel “The Dive from Clausen’s Pier,” will participate on a panel this year about “ordinary people” in fiction writing.
“I think one of the things that will probably come up is the question of what we mean by ordinary, and what’s associated with that question is the idea or the matter of whether there are characters whose lives are too “˜ordinary’ who merit dramatization or whether everybody is a viable character,” said Packer. “There is no character idea that wouldn’t work if you didn’t treat it correctly.”
It is Packer’s first year at the festival, and she looks forward to meeting other writers and readers.
“(Panels) are a nice chance to focus on questions and find out what other writers think about some of the things that preoccupy me in my writing life,” Packer said.
This year, Boyle will hold his own reading with an introduction by UCLA creative writing Professor Michelle Huneven.
“In controlled circumstances, in a good theater like Schoenberg where it’s dark and the sound is good and there are no distractions, I think the audience can fall into that spell and get out of themselves for a while and enjoy literature as it’s meant to be enjoyed: as an entertainment, as something that moves and stimulates you in different ways,” Boyle said.
The activities at the festival may only last one weekend, but forming a community for readers and writers is something that does not have to be an isolated opportunity. While the festival provides a plethora of options to participate in this community, Orliss advises attendees to set out goals for what they want to do but also, in the end, to simply have fun.
“You’re bound to see something that wasn’t on your schedule of events, and that’s the point of the festival. Leave yourself open to what you see around the next corner that interests you,” she said.