Skip to main content

Thoughts from the Director: 2015 St. George Book Festival

When I began as the Director of the St. George Book Festival three years ago, I had a dream of what it could become. I wanted the book festival to be more than just coming to hear an author talk about their latest book. I wanted it to be a family, reader of all ages and community event. But even though I had this vision of what could be, making it happen was another matter.


A lot of people pat me on the back for a job well done, but in all honesty, I couldn't have done it without my committee: Dave Smith, Darren Edwards, Dawn McLain, Lenore Madden, Lin Floyd, Bonnie Anderson, James Duckett and Ami Comeford. Or without our partners and supporters: Joel Tucker and Alan Anderson at the Washington County Library System, Pam Graf and the Spooky Town Fair committee, Mary Nell Lundquest and her team at the St. George Children's Museum, Jon Braaten at Abby Inn, Donna MacBean, and David Rowland at Comics Plus.

It's been a long road and this year was filled with growing pains and uphill battles. I didn't do it alone and nor would I want to. Everyone I worked with is the backbone of the St. George Book Festival and our community is lucky to have them. They are the group that supports my big dreams and help make it possible.

They are the ones who put up with my crazy ideas such as let's decorate the Literacy Charity Dinner ourselves this year. Or how about have anywhere from 2 to 3 events happening each day of a week long book festival.

They helped find and suggest some of the best speakers we've had. They came to every event and didn't complain, but just asked, "What can I do to help?"

This is what the committee, supporters and partners of the St. George Book Festival are able to do and I'm thankful they can so I can keep dreaming of what the book festival can be while they make that dream reality.

Here are the people who really deserve a pat on the back for a job well done:
 
Jessica Elgin, Spooky Town Fair Committee Member

 
Darren Edwards, SGBF Vice Co-Chairman

Janice Brooks, Speaker at SGBF Kick-off

Lin Floyd, SGBF Youth Poetry Contest Coordinator

James Duckett, Technology/Social Media Coordinator

Bonnie Anderson, SGBF Treasurer and Lenore Madden, SGBF WCSD Coordinator

Ami Comeford, SGBF DSU Coordinator & Utah Humanities Boardmember

Jack Rolf, Speaker at Kick-off

Brad Wilcox, Keynote Speaker at Kick-off

Justin Osmond, Speaker at Humanities Night

Jonathan Diaz, Speaker at Humanities Night

Dawn McLain, SGBF Sponsorship/Media Coordinator

Dave Smith, SGBF Vice Co-Chairman

Pam Graf, WCSDF and Spooky Town Fair Director

And so many others...

Thank you everyone for making 2015 one of the best year's ever this October!


Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for visiting my blog and for leaving a comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Interview Friday with Author Maggie Lyons

Maggie Lyons was born in Wales and brought up in England before gravitating west to Virginia’s coast. She zigzagged her way through a motley variety of careers from orchestral management to law-firm media relations to academic editing. Writing and editing nonfiction for adults brought plenty of satisfaction but nothing like the magic she discovered in writing fiction and nonfiction for children. Several of her articles, poetry, and a chapter book have been published in the children’s magazines Stories for Children Magazine and knowonder! VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today, Maggie. To get things started can you share what you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Maggie: Very fortunately for me, I’m retired and my son left the nest some time ago. That doesn’t mean I have no other commitments, of course. In fact, I’m very busy as a freelance editor, but I do have the privilege of being able to control m...
4 comments
Read more

Interview Friday with Author L.R.W. Lee of the Andy Smithson MG Fantasy Series

From an early age L. R. W. Lee knew she wanted to write a children’s book. Her imagination for such a book was cultivated early on as her family didn’t have a lot of money. She and her older brother were encouraged to use their imaginations to entertain themselves. And use them they did – climbing trees and tree forts, using a quilt for a matchbox car city, making puppets and putting on shows, and much more and her creativity and imagination grew. VS: Mr. Lee, I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama once again. You recently just released the 2 nd book in our series, which is a great accomplishment. What do you do to help balance your writing life with your family life while writing a series? Lee: I’m spoiled in that regard. I founded, built and sold a multi-million dollar company in January 2012. Since then, I’ve been free to write full time so I don’t face quite the challenges as many authors. I write while everyone is out of the house and ...
1 comment
Read more

Writing Prompt Monday: The Challenge

The idea is too basically express yourself on paper, learn how to use your five senses, or build upon an idea. Think back to when you were in school, it used to only take your teacher saying, “Write a paragraph or one page composition on any subject you want.” This was all it used to take to get those creative juices flowing, but what about now? If you are like me and most writers I know, you have most likely experience the dreaded word “Writer’s Block” from time to time. Getting past this wide-eyed, blank page stare can be hard, and the flashing cursor does not help matters. What is a writer to do? Well it does not matter if you are a New York Best-selling author or an aspiring author, we all need a little creative boost from time to time and that is where my Writing Prompt Monday comes in. In my search for a writing prompt for this week, I came across a great site called Creative Writing Prompts . They have over 300 writing prompts to get your creative juices flowin...
4 comments
Read more