The Tenth Annual West Virginia Book Festival

(photo by Dory Adams)

I was in Charleston this week-end at the tenth annual West Virginia Book Festival. They do a beautiful job-- Pam May from the main library runs it, and runs its splendidly. Half the vast hall is a used book sale, the other half has tables for publishers and many other vendors including a barbecue seller, the ACLU, the Kanawha County Book mobile, games for kids (and trick or treat candy) and even a woman giving information about Islam. To see the headliners (the big one was Nicholas Sparks) click here. I signed books at the Ohio University Press table and gave a workshop on "Ten Strategies to Write Your Novel," and saw a ton of people, of whom I won't remember all: Cat Pleska, Belinda Anderson, George and Connie Brosi, Marc Harshman, Anna Smucker, Carter Seaton, Dory Adams and Kevin Scanlon, Phyllis Moore, Kathy Manley, the staff at WVU Press, and of course my new friends at OUP. It's a really good event-- people seem to enjoy themselves (a LOT of people), and as Belinda Anderson says, "There's nothing to perk you up like the smell of books!"