By Chelsea Schmid
Staff Writer who is Special to LIVE!
April 15, 2008 Downtown San Angelo came alive with color and culture last Saturday when the streets lined with book vendors and the sidewalks filled with chalk art outside the county courthouse.
The event was actually a conglomeration of three separate functions that collaborated on the date and time to encourage a turnout for one another.
“Every year we have one fundraiser, and what we’ve been doing for the last four years is bringing back graduates who have gone into different fields,” says Debbi Meads, chief cooperations officer for the San Angelo Schools Foundation. “Our first year we did graduates in journalism, second year we did the movies—film and theatre, and last year we did sculpture. This year we’re doing authors…”
The head of the Tom Green County Library had always wanted to host a book festival, and the idea coincided perfectly with the “authors” theme the Schools Foundation was featuring this year, Mead says. From there, the two organizations contacted the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts and planned to host their combined event on the same day as the fifth annual Sidewalk Chalk Festival.
The book festival was an all-day affair and featured readers’ theatres from local students, a teen poetry slam, and performances including reading, singing, and guitar playing by author John Erickson who penned the “Hank The Cowdog” series.
Other authors included local and regional writers Elmer Kelton, Barbara Barton, and Ross McSwain, to name a few. The event also highlighted the works of many ASU professors, Mead says, adding that most of the writers present were connected with San Angelo.
In addition to the authorial presence, bookstores from chains such as Hastings and Walden Books as well as smaller entities like San Angelo’s Book Heaven came out to socialize and sell their wares. Books were available to buy, sell, trade and peruse; and with the success of the event evident with a look in either direction, Meads says she hope the festival will become an annual event.
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