San Antonio Report

Tomorrow San Antonio will host over 90 authors in its 12th public annual Book Festival at the Central Library. The San Antonio Book Festival (SABF) is a free public event where visitors can talk to authors, listen to moderated discussions, buy books and participate in activities.
Several members of the Trinity community are involved in the book festival in various ways. Some professors are attending as authors or moderators, and Trinity University Press (TU Press) has a large section of SABF reserved for its authors. Tom Payton, director of TU Press, has been to many book festivals but commented on the unique benefits of SABF.
“San Antonio has historically had higher-than-comparable-cities illiteracy rates. … So an event like this really helps shine a celebratory light on just the culture of reading and ideas.” Payton said. “So it’s uniquely important in a city like San Antonio because we need more focus on the culture of reading and writing.”
Andrew Porter, professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Trinity, is attending SABF this year as a moderator, but has previously attended the event as an author. Porter spoke about the benefits of SABF for authors and moderators.
“The people who might show up for my panel at the book festival might be a different group of people that would show up for a reading that I gave or an event that I did here on campus. So you’re really connecting with people in the entire city, right?” Porter said. “I’ve also really enjoyed being a moderator, too, because, in some cases, I’ve been asked to be a moderator for a panel of writers whose work I wasn’t familiar with before, and so it’s an opportunity to get to know the work of authors you might otherwise not know. In other cases, it’s an opportunity to connect in real life with authors you’ve always admired and that’s really exciting as well.”
One goal of SABF is to celebrate literature and reading. Kelly Grey Carlisle, associate professor of English, will be attending SABF as part of a group of English department moderators this year and commented on the celebration aspect of SABF.
“When we read and write, we’re all on our own, and it’s so much more fun to read a book in a book group or in a classroom. It’s really fun to be a reader with this crowd of all these readers,” Carlisle said.
As Carlisle mentioned, another main goal of SABF is to unite readers and writers. Payton also spoke on how readers and writers relate to one another through books. “If you’re a publisher or a writer it’s like write it, edit it, design it, get it done,and the minute you have a book, it’s like you’re done,” Payton said. “But I always like to make the point that that’s fine for those of us behind the curtain doing it, but for the world, the book isn’t the endpoint, the book’s the starting point.”