Postcard from Tucson

I am just back from the the annual Tucson Book Festival. It is arguably my favorite event in Tucson. Too bad it only happens once a year. This was the 4th year and it is now in the top 3 book festivals in the US. This year, well over 450 published authors, such as J.A. Jance, Elmore Leonard, T. Jefferson Parker and many more, came here for the two day celebration of books of all types…from mysteries to history…from thrillers to cookbooks, all genres were represented.

As you can see, there were a boatload of tents all over the University of Arizona Mall where you can purchase books, attend seminars, eat lunch, meet authors, get your books autographed, and visit many other publishing-related vendors. The photo above shows you just some of tents outside…there are many more off to the right.

For me, the best part of the festival are the author talks and workshops that occur in classrooms, auditoriums and tents on the U of A campus. There are hundreds of them, but sadly you can only do five a day as they are held in the same time slots. When the lists come out, I spend hours going over them and narrowing down the ones I want to see…then finally make my final selections. Sadly there are always two or three events held at the same time and I have to make a hard choice. As always, I carry the list on my smartphone so I knew where to go for each event.

One of the other fun things, at least for me, is discovering new authors. While researching events, I look up their names in Amazon and Wikipedia to see what kind of books they write. This year, I made many new discoveries and have started reading their books. It always makes the book better after you have attended an interview or panel discussion with the author.

The events I attended had such diverse titles as, “Nasty Nazis, “Queen Elizabeth I and her World,” “Books in High Gear,”and “The O.K. Corral Gunfight and the Alamo in History and Legend,” just to name a few.

Like last year, C-Span 2 was also here showing live book talks on both Saturday and Sunday. I attended two of those and got on camera as I was one of the questioners during the discussion of the OK Corral. I hope I sounded intelligent.

In such a short space as this, it is difficult to explain how much I love this festival. If you are an avid reader such as me, look for a festival like this somewhere near you.  Or next year, plan to come down to Tucson and see this one.  By the way, the weather was perfect, in the mid 70’s.