Keeping Lit Alive – The Salem Literature Festival

In an earlier post, you may have read my lamentation on the closing of Cornerstone, Salem’s local independent bookstore, which shut its doors last January. Though many of us got together to try to save the store, we lost the battle, leaving Salem dependent on neighboring community bookstores for our literary chats and recommendations. They tried hard to fill the gap left in a city that prides itself on being literary, even to the point of claiming to be the birthplace of the great American novel, a title attributed not to Salem per se but referring to the works of its native son, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Even so, the hole left by Cornerstone’s closing is a gaping one. Of course, we in Salem know that our beloved bookstore is not the only casualty. Still, both readers and writers feel a bit powerless and confused in the face of such huge changes in the book industry.

A secondary casualty of Cornerstone’s closing might have been the Salem Literary Festival. For the last three years, Cornerstone has hosted a small but successful lit fest, one that catered to both readers and writers. Last year, I served as master of ceremonies, announcing the winner of our annual writing contest, and introducing Lily King as our special guest. We held a marathon reading of To Kill a Mockingbird in the center of town, an event that drew my editor, agent, and marketing execs from HarperCollins (the book’s publisher) as well as many readers and passersby. From 9AM to 7PM, Scout, Atticus, and Jem were alive and well in Salem’s Derby Square. It was a special day.

Everyone loved our lit fest. We all wanted to see it grow and prosper, but with Cornerstone gone, the festival was dead. Or so it seemed until I got a call from Beth Simpson, who had served as an event planner for the store, and had been largely responsible for the lit fest. “How do you feel about keeping the festival going?” she asked. She didn’t have to ask twice. I was in, and so were my husband, my assistant, and various friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

Salem, Massachusetts, our hometown, is the perfect place for a literary festival. We’re a small, beautiful, and very walkable city with some of the best historic architecture in the U.S. What we needed was for some of those historic buildings to open their doors to us, to offer themselves as venues for the festival. We’d had some success getting this to happen in past years, but this year we needed more. If we were going to do this, we had to scale it up.

The planning committee met several times at our dining room table, going over every detail. Though we had some heavy-duty publishing, PR, and event planning experience, there was still an element of those old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland movies, you know the ones where someone has an old barn, and the kids decide to put on a show? It was fun, it was exciting, but was it going to work?

The Spirit of ’76 Bookstore in Marblehead kindly offered to help, selling books at the festival, contacting authors and helping to market the event. Almost everyone we invited said yes. Things were going along perfectly, until we hit our first snafu: competition, not from other literary festivals, but from Salem itself. Our authors all wanted to come, but we had no place to put them. We were competing with Halloween, our big holiday, something you don’t want to do in Salem. It was a surprise to us. Our festival was scheduled for September 23-25. One would think we’d be safe. But in Salem, Halloween starts earlier every year.  Through begging, cajoling, and calling in every favor we could muster, we managed to secure some great historic locations, all within easy walking distance of each other: The House of the Seven Gables, the Salem Athenaeum, The Phillips Mansion. Even the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) found a place for us to hold an event.

Unfortunately, we were less lucky with our sleeping accommodations. There wasn’t a free room in town, so we ended up in Marblehead, the next town over, not a terrible outcome, as it turned out, because Marblehead is a beautiful place. Still, it’s not exactly an easy walk from Salem.

I was in charge of lining up the speakers for our two paid events: an opening night party on Friday and a dinner with the authors on Saturday. I had recently met with Erin Morgenstern who wrote The Night Circus while she lived in Salem. I thought she would be perfect for our opening night event. We counted ourselves very lucky when she said yes. We also wanted to feature another author from a different part of the country, one who had many local fans, for our Dinner With the Authors on Saturday night. When Joshilyn Jackson agreed, we were thrilled.

Now it was time to pull it all together. We’d been creatively suggesting event topics for months. We wanted something for book clubs. We planned to feature different genres. And book bloggers. And poetry. Anything was possible. But who fit with whom? Which venue was right for which event? Slowly it all began to gel. Press releases were sent. Accommodations were confirmed. With the launching of the website and the printing of brochures, everything came together.  We finally had a festival!

It runs from September 23-25^th. I am once again hosting the event. I hope you’ll come.

While I’m not sure that creating a literary festival is the right solution for your towns, it has been great for Salem. In a time when writers are losing resources, putting such an event together feels quite empowering. We can find a way to commune with readers and other writers. We can sell books.

If you can’t do a lit fest in your community, some of the individual events could easily work as well: a book club brunch, open mic night at a local establishment. Getting a community of writers together seems to be the key. Let them know you want to do this, and you’ll receive great support.

In case you are interested in hosting a festival or similar event, I put together a few rules that have helped me:

1. Start Early: We had six months. We could have used a year. It probably would have turned out the same way, but it would have been less stressful.
2. Enlist Volunteers: As many as you can possibly imagine. Whatever number you think you need, double it. People drop out. Things come up. Life happens.
3. Know your competition: What else is happening that weekend? Are you competing with other book festivals? What other local events are going on? A charity golf tournament or a marathon run can derail you.
4. Raise money: Barter, beg, call in favors. There is no getting this done without funding of some sort.
5. Promote the heck out of it: Tell everyone you know. Get local media coverage. Tell your story often. Then tell it again. As with book sales, word of mouth is often the best recommendation.

In the name of shameless self-promotion, I would be remiss if I didn’t leave you with the details of the festival in hopes that I can draw you to Salem. Check it out at https://www.salemlitfest.com/schedule. Some of you are already presenting (be sure to catch Therese Walsh and Writer Unboxed at the Book Bloggers Panel on Sunday). And if any of you are so inclined, please come to our Grub Street sponsored open mic event at Gulu Gulu Café on Sunday at 4PM.

Please let me know what you are doing in your communities to help keep lit alive. What kinds of events bring readers and writers together where you live?

Brunonia Barry

Brunonia Barry is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Lace Reader, The Map of True Places, and The Fifth Petal, chosen #1 of Strand Magazine’s Top 25 Books of 2017. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has been an Amazon Best of the Month and a People Magazine Pick. Barry was the first American author to win the International Women’s Fiction Festival’s Baccante Award and was a past recipient of Ragdale Artists’ Colony’s Strnad Invitational Fellowship as well as the winner of New England Book Festival’s award for Best Fiction. Her reviews and articles on writing have appeared in The London Times, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post. Brunonia served as chairperson of the Salem Athenaeum’s Writers’ Committee, as Executive Director of the Salem Literary Festival, and as a member of Grub Street’s Development Committee. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts with her husband, Gary Ward, and their dog, Angel.

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