by Adanna Moriarty
Each year in late April USC opens its campus to the annual LA Times Festival of Books (LATFB). Since 1997 Writers & Publishers Network (WPN) has represented our members and the organization twenty-five times. We showcase their hard-won books to more than 150,000 book-loving festival-goers. Our presence has grown over the years to a co-op booth that holds ten authors a day. This year we had our first-ever children’s booth.
Some of our authors and publishers hung out the entire weekend, and others for Saturday or Sunday only. Between the two groups, we hosted thirteen authors and two publishers in the main booth.
Authors: Richard Alvarado, Dale Arenson, Gordon Blitz-Tofu Ink, Vibiana Chamberlin, Tricia Cochee, Kimberly Davis Basso, Susan Hartzler, Gary Helm, Katy Hoover, Collette McNeil, Colleen O’Mara, Stacey Powells, and Tonia Shimin.
Our two publishing houses were Tofu Ink Publishing and Curious Corvid Publishing for their second year in a row. Each of these houses represents queer and diverse authors.
The range of stories our members brought us this year is remarkable, in my opinion. Each book is worth a look. I’m confident you can find your next read with one of them. From memoir to poetry and everything in between, it’s a reflection of WPN and the work we have done over the years to represent such a diverse group.
For our first year with a children’s booth, six authors joined us:
Jacob Kilgore, Parvati Marcus, Dr. Gerry Haller, Yusa Chang, Laura Alexander, and Loretta Johnson-Smith.
Each of these authors created something exceptional in their children’s books, from cultural exploration to art collected worldwide to tell a story. If you have littles, I highly recommend buying their stories for your kids. The children’s area is filled with the things fairytales are made of: ribbons, glitter, and candy abound throughout this section. We were thrilled to have dedicated space in this genre for 2023 right as readers walked into the area.
With more than 500 authors, publishers, bookstores, and musicians, the LATFB brings in quite the crowd where families, hopeful authors, poets, screenwriters, and more can peruse books, speak with authors, have their new acquisitions signed, or chat up the many publishers and authors to gain insight on how to publish.
The real beauty of this two-day festival is the community. It’s never more apparent than in the WPN booth. We were able to offer a shared expense for the booth, which otherwise would be financially out of reach for most authors, and to meet the sheer number of folks interested in learning more about what a nonprofit like WPN does for individuals on their path to publishing. Hundreds of people stopped by, enabling us to do serious community outreach, make connections, and watch the authors in our booth bloom while they discussed their creations.
As an author myself, I find it beautiful to sit in the late-April sunny LA weather while discussing books either published or hope-to-be-published with other authors and potential readers. It’s an inspiring weekend. If you struggle with writer’s block, the LATFB will surely cure it, even if you attend the free event only as an onlooker. Think of looking through thousands of books, touching their covers, flipping pages, and seeing the layout of their interiors. This event is sure to light a creative fire.
Last year I spent most of my time talking, selling my book, and inscribing my name to my newly published poetry collection. This year I talked with folks about WPN and our mission to bring the publishing world into an accessible realm for writers. We collected hundreds of names to add to our email list and gained new members.
I think my favorite part is walking around and seeing people curled up with new books. I found people under trees, enjoying the shade and a slight breeze, escaping the weekend’s heat. On benches and steps, anywhere they could steal a quiet moment to explore new worlds, they satisfied their need to read it immediately.
It’s the perfect environment for the book lover, with food trucks offering anything you want to eat, shaved-ice carts throughout, music from the main stage, and readings from the poetry stage, directly across Trousdale from the WPN booth. Nooks and crannies throughout the USC campus offer a surprising quiet, once away from the main drag, to eat, sip, read, laugh, and discuss. If you’ve never been, I suggest taking time from your busy schedule to indulge in the event next year.
The indie and self-published world can be challenging to navigate, as most of us know. The LA Times Festival of Books shows me, through the sheer number of vendors and attendees, that the struggle pays off if you put yourself out there. Few places and times in the world prove how much people still love books.
Adanna Moriarty‘s lifelong immersion in the literary world, guided by her writer father and novelist aunt, sparked her passion for storytelling. From winning a state poetry competition in 8th grade to her first publication in high school, she quickly established herself as a talented writer. She later earned a degree in Web Design from The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. As a literary publicist, Adanna partners with authors to bring their books to life. Adanna’s writing accomplishments include publishing her collection of poems, Threadbare: A Patchwork of Poems that Make a Life, in January 2022.
