News from the Equality State Book Festival

Most states have at least one statewide book festival. Some, such as Arizona, have several. Wyoming's Equality State Book Festival has been held every other year since 2006 in Casper. It's organized by a committee made up of Casper College faculty and staff and members of the community. And me, Mike Shay of Cheyenne, fiction writer and the individual arts specialist at the Wyoming Arts Council. This year's co-drectors are Holly Wendt and Laurie Lye of Casper College. They just sent me this exciting news:

Equality State Book Festival organizers are pleased to announce this year's festival date has been set for Sept. 14-15 in Casper. This celebration marks the 26th anniversary of the annual Casper College/ARTCORE Literary Conference, which has been called "The Equality State Book Festival" every other year since 2006, this being our fourth venture in that spirit.

For the two-day event, more than 15 authors and illustrators will share their talents, giving readings, leading craft talks, emceeing a poetry slam, visiting local schools, and participating on panels. This year's group includes poets, novelists, memoirists, essayists, illustrators, and publishers. 

Among the participants slated are state-wide and regional favorites: Pat Frolander, current Poet Laureate for Wyoming; Zak Pullen, Cat Urbigkit, Kendra Spanjer and Karla Oceanak who will be making school visits; Alyson Hagy and David Romtvedt, faculty from University of Wyoming's MFA program, who will give readings and lead craft talks; and essayist and poet Linda Hasselstrom. From further regions, we are also joined by Rebecca O'Connor and Renee d'Aoust.

The Wyoming Arts Council will be announcing their annual Creative Writing Fellowship awards which celebrate poetry this year and will be judged by Brian Turner. Our friends at Natrona County Public Library are sponsoring a visit from Luis Carlos Montalvan. 

We hope you can join us to appreciate the good company of fellow readers and writers and help celebrate books and the written word Sept. 14-15, 2012, at Casper College and a few other Casper locations, all to be detailed on this web site soon.

For more book festival information, please contact Laurie Lye at llye@caspercollege.edu or 307-268-2639.