Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024 will mark the 10th anniversary of the annual Portland Book Festival. Over 100 local and national authors will be attending across 10 stages, with more than 75 food truck vendors parked outside. The festival will be taking place in Southwest Portland at outdoor venues across the South Park Blocks city park, as well as inside of the Portland Art Museum.
The Portland Book Festival is the largest festival of its kind in the Pacific Northwest and requires hundreds of dedicated volunteers to produce it. The event will include author readings, writing contests and workshops, exhibits, interviews, and of course, the book fair where all of the books are on display for readers to buy. Some of the chosen authors and speakers attending this year include award winning novelists Renée Watson, Max Brallier, Victoria Chang, and many more! The lineup is still subject to change. The festival will be extended into a week-long event called Cover to Cover hosted in bars, coffee shops, and restaurants throughout Portland with similar book, reading, and writing centered events for locals.
The Portland Book Festival, or as referred to by The Oregonian, “The city’s annual indulgence in new literary works,” is presented by Literary Arts. Literary Arts is a nonprofit center with a long history of serving Oregon’s readers and writers through programs like Writers in the Schools and the Oregon Book Awards, among many other projects, explains Irene Nguyen, Multnomah County Library’s contact center representative.
Literary Arts partners with the Multnomah County Library “to offer to its patrons, cultural passes called the My Discovery Pass,” Nguyen explains. This pass includes access to Literary Arts’ author lecture series and allows access to partnership in the Everybody Reads, a community-wide reading project, with lectures by these bestselling authors.
Literary Arts ensures there is something to offer every kind of reader at the festival, and they look for a wide variety of books and genres. Senior Artistic Director at Literary Arts, Amanda Bullock, says that it takes about one year to create the book festival. “We start looking at potential books and authors up to a year in advance, and submissions open in January of each year.” Bullock continues to describe the planning process, saying that in the summer, they work to confirm the lineup and start recruiting volunteers, and in the fall it is busy with finalizing details and making sales, up until the day of the festival!
This festival brings authors and readers together from all over Portland, each with their own aspirations while attending. Amanda Yoshida, a picture book illustrator attending this year’s festival, says she has dreamt of creating picture books since she was a child. Yet she explains, “I didn’t pivot my career from Graphic Design to illustration until my son was born eight years ago. Reading him all those picture books reignited my childhood dream, so I created a picture book for him and began my illustration career.” At the festival she will speak about her newest picture book, “Ellie Mae Dreams Big!”
Another writer attending, Damien Miles-Paulson, explains how his career can often be a lonely pursuit. “It’s filled with many hours alone, staring at a screen, and writing in notebooks, and when something gets published, your audience also experiences your words alone, without your presence.” By attending the festival, he will be able to meet people who have read his writing face to face and finally connect with them. Although, he continues, “If you’ve done your job, they feel like you’re there in the story, so they shouldn’t feel alone.”
Miles-Paulson’s story isn’t unique to him — the festival allows for writers to share their stories with their readers and even expand their way of thinking. Bullock summarizes her thoughts on the festival, explaining, “The Portland Book Festival is a celebration of books and storytelling for readers of all ages. It’s a community event, for [both] writers and authors certainly, but I really think of it as an event for readers. It’s great to have a chance to be in the community with other readers and book lovers, since reading is often a solitary activity.”
