San Antonio Book Festival (SABF)<\/span><\/a><\/strong> seemed to go off without a hitch. The festival takes place downtown each year at the famously enchilada-red Central Library and the Southwest School of Art across Augusta from the library. A free, open, all-day event, the 2019 SABF featured more than ninety national, regional, local, and emerging authors, and some eighty author panels. The 2018 festival welcomed more than eighteen thousand visitors.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Featured speakers this year included Newberry Award-winning author Meg Medina, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright, UT Michener Chair Elizabeth McCracken, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Ben Fountain, and many more. Notable panels included \u201cSan Antonio\u2019s Environmental History\u201d with Char Miller, author of San Antonio: A Tricentennial History<\/em>; \u201cHome Is Stronger than a Wall\u201d with Alfredo Corchado, Reyna Grande, and Jean Guerrero; \u201cRage Becomes Her: Women and Political Anger\u201d with Carina Chocano, Amy Gentry, and Mathangi Subramanian; \u201cObsessed with Texas\u201d with Sarah Bird, David Norman, and Mimi Swartz; and \u201cQueer as Folk: Writing LGBT Characters\u201d with Melissa Febos, Mathangi Subramanian, and Bryan Washington.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Author presentations are held indoors while outdoors the festival grounds feature book sales, signings, children\u2019s story time and learning projects, family activities, and a technology area. Food trucks offer a variety of eats; special tents feature live music and recipe demonstrations by cookbook authors. The festival marketplace offers a setting for booksellers, publishers, literary-minded nonprofits, and local artists and craft makers. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The festival includes a Children\u2019s Area, which features children\u2019s book readings by guest authors, a performance of Dr. Krashundbang by the Magik Theatre and Spanish story time by Cuentology, plus a myriad of creative activities including bookmark-making, paper-marbling, and a chance to meet <\/span><\/span>the ballerinas from the Children\u2019s Ballet of San Antonio. Teens have their own spaces. YA authors gather in the Geektown area, including actor and singer-songwriter Val Emmich, who worked with Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul to create a novelization of the hit musical Dear Evan Hansen. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
SABF, the signature program of the San Antonio Public Library Foundation (SAPLF), was first presented in April 2013 with the Texas Book Festival, the Central Library, and the Southwest School of Art as founding partners. The festival\u2019s mission is to \u201cunite readers and writers in a celebration of ideas, books, libraries, and literary culture.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
LONE STAR LIT’S TAKEAWAYS…<\/strong><\/p>\n*Lawrence Wright is currently working with Marcia Ball on a musical about Texas politics. He also does a spot-on Ross Perot impression. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n*Ben Fountain enjoyed his first \u201cdeep dive\u201d into narrative nonfiction, which allowed him to fit the present into historical context. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n*Amy Gentry calls her newest novel, Last Woman Standing<\/em>, a feminist revenge-swap thriller. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n*Elizabeth McCracken, who teaches at the UT Michener Center for Writers, said that writing can\u2019t be taught because the rules are specific to each writer, and that the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 changed everything. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n*W.F Strong, an \u201coral essayist\u201d for the Texas Standard program on Texas Public Radio, has written a \u201cprimer on Texas,\u201d and wants you to know that if you come to the red barn, you\u2019ve driven too far.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n*”Stateless” Sarah Bird noted that you can say whatever you want in your writing if you say it with humor.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n*David Norman was inspired by his own novel to take up jazz piano (which involves a bow tie).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n*Mimi Swartz thinks Texas is God\u2019s gift to journalists\u2014it\u2019s impossible to run out of material. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lone Star Lit was out and about at the seventh annual San Antonio Book Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[846,813,830,974,861],"class_list":["post-1559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bookfestival","tag-lone-star-literary-life","tag-lonestarliterarycom","tag-outandabout","tag-sanantonio"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}