Thousands of people attended the 20th annual Bookmarks Festival Saturday in downtown Winston-Salem, getting authors to sign their books and learning about how some books were written.
Organizers planned to accommodate about 20,000 people at Saturday’s festival, said Jamie Rogers Southern, the executive director of Bookmarks.
The festival began at 9:30 a.m. amid light rain. The rain ended about 11 a.m. Saturday. Bookmarks’ staff operates a bookstore on West Fourth Street.
“So far, we’ve got a packed crowd in here,” Southern said, referring to Calvary Moravian Church on Holly Avenue, where three authors talked about their books to nearly 200 people.
“I’m hoping that everything stays solid throughout the day,” Southern said as she talked about the weather. “Everything is covered, and everything inside is covered.”
The exhibitors used tents at the festival. Organizers staged panel discussions with authors indoors at the church, at a Kids Stage, the Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts and Hanesbrands Theatre.
A group of 51 authors attended the festival, and they write books for people of all ages and in every genre, Southern said.
The festival’s purpose is “to expose people to the joy of reading, books and new ideas,” Southern said.
“The biggest readers we have right now are children,” Southern said. “Adults slow down their reading. Kids are excited about all kinds of things – stories, adventures, magic (and) mystery.”
Nayeli Jordan-Jones, and her father, Phillip Jordan Jones, who live in Winston-Salem, attended the festival. They are natives of New York City.
“I’m trying to get more into reading books,” Nayeli Jordan-Jones said as she and her father stood under the Bookmarks Bookstore tent.
“I didn’t know it was going to rain,” she said. “Coming to the festival gives me a chance to spend time with dad and time to read books.”
Phillip Jordan-Jones said he loves to read.
“It stimulates your brain,” he said. “Reading gets you deep into the story and you learn about the characters.”
Across Poplar Street, Dr. Harrison Taylor, a Greensboro neurologist, displayed copies of his two books, “The Henchman and The Midnight Auctions” and “Those Who Hunt Wolves.”
Taylor is a part-time author, he said.
“The Henchman” is an action fantasy adventure novel about a young man who aspires to be a henchman, and “Those Who Hunt Wolves” is about two spies who steal a secret weapon from the U.S. government, and government officials send super soldiers, called wolves, after them, Taylor said.
Several festival attendees stopped by Taylor’s tent.
About 200 people attended a discussion of three authors in the Reynolds Place Theatre of the Rhodes Center for the Arts. The discussion topic was “Murder, Mystery and Mayhem.”
The authors, Kimberly McCreicht, Clemence Michallon and Mia Manansala, talked about their books and their writing processes for their murder mysteries.
Readers are drawn to murder mysteries because “they want to make sure that doesn’t happen to them,” McCreicht said.
Michallon said her books focus on relationships among their characters in her works. She hopes readers will ask themselves, “Is this person I love capable of murder?”
In Manansala’s murder mysteries, she introduces readers to characters who are marginalized by society, and how murder affects local communities and people connected to the murders, Manansala said.
The authors said they used various writing styles and processes in their books, but they all want to present readers with an interesting story.
“Writing books really has been very rewarding,” Michallon said. “My favorite part of the writing process is getting to my characters.”
jhinton@wsjournal.com
336-727-7299 @jhintonWSJ
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