Delight Springs

Monday, October 6, 2025

How to Save a Book Festival

The Southern Festival of Books in Nashville has been one of the highlights of October for me for decades. Trump's & Elon's DOGE tried to kill it. The owner of my favorite bookstore helped save it. It'll be back weekend after next. Thank goodness!
"… a festival where tens of thousands of people come together to celebrate books — books of all kinds, for all ages — tells us something about the power of storytelling. Especially in a time of terrible fear and sorrow and vitriol, stories remind us of who we are and of how we belong to one another.

It's too soon to say how long the public arts and humanities, among so many other facets of the public good that are now in profound peril, will survive. Will people part with enough $20 bills to save them forever? Will philanthropic organizations support endangered cultural assets indefinitely? Will a lawsuit by the Federation of State Humanities Councils restore funding until the federal budgeting process returns to normal?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions. What I do know is that we need the humanities now, perhaps more than we have ever needed them, because we live in a time when so many of us have forgotten this crucial truth: We are a fangless, clawless, furless species, and we survive only in community."
— Margaret Renkl

The 37th annual Southern Festival of Books will be held in Nashville Oct. 18-19. As always, it is free and open to the public.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/opinion/how-to-save-a-book-festival.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Last year at the festival: the author and her brother , seated on stage...

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