Editors ANZ member Andrea McKay AE couldn’t attend IPEd’s Adelaide conference, but she has fond memories of the first time she got together with editing colleagues and authors deep in the heart of Texas.
The taxi driver said Oprah Winfrey was in town for the book festival. That’s when I knew it was a big deal.
I’d flown from Wellington to Austin, Texas for the 2012 Texas Book Festival, where the indie publishing house I worked for had a stand. I’d been an editor for the company, set up by 2 women from Sydney and 2 from Dallas, Texas, since 2010 and we’d just had major success with a book that had turned into an international bestseller. Random House had bought the rights because we couldn’t keep up with printing it on demand, and the company was celebrating by bringing its staff and authors together in Austin. I was “the New Zealand office”, and we had editors in Australia and the UK, and throughout the United States. Our authors were mostly from the US, but also Australia, the UK, Ireland and Portugal.
The 2-day festival was established in 1995 by Laura Bush, a former librarian, when her husband, George W, was newly installed as Texas governor. Its aims were to benefit public libraries, promote local authors and encourage reading. It’s grown to host 250 to 300 authors each year and attract more than 40,000 attendees. Famous previous attendees have included Margaret Atwood, John Grisham, Tom Hanks, Nick Hornby and Ann Patchett.
Streets are closed off around the Texas State Capitol and giant tents placed in the middle of the road for signings and book sales. Panel events and interviews are held in the capitol building and the surrounding area. There are food and entertainment stalls and lots of Spanish spoken in the streets.
In 2012, the featured authors included Justin Cronin, Junot Diaz, Jasper Fforde, Maureen Johnson, David Levithan, Marie Lu, Garth Nix, Maggie Stiefvater and Naomi Wolf, actors Tony Danza and Stephen Tobolowsky, anchorman Dan Rather, and singer Jewel. If Oprah was there, I must’ve missed her. I saw Danza and Tobolowsky from across the signing tent but was too shy to line up for their autographs – and too cheap to buy the expensive American hardbacks of their books, something I have since regretted.
Our authors joined us on our stand, promoting themselves and each other. The event had a great atmosphere, and it wasn’t until much later that someone reminded me that most of the people walking through our tent would have been carrying concealed weapons (one of our group had a taser in her handbag, which was a shock – pun intended – over dinner)! The only guns I’d seen were on the Texas rangers and cops patrolling around, and we’d kept the ones near our stand sweet by offering them Tim Tams.
I couldn’t go to the 2013 festival, and by the 2014 event, the publishing house was winding up. It was our final hurrah, so I had to attend. Authors that year included Martin Amis, James Ellroy, Norman Lear, Ziggy Marley, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Emily St John Mandel and Colson Whitehead.
This time, I had more confidence to go exploring and attend author sessions, even though it was 39°C outside and even hotter inside the tents. With one of our authors, I went to a romance panel with Stephanie Perkins, Rebecca Serle and Jennifer E Smith, and then met them individually at their signing tent. One of my colleagues went to a signing with Rick Riordan, and when she told him her daughter would be sorry to have missed his panel, he demanded she call her at their home in Florida so he could talk to her on the phone. He did so for almost 20 minutes, and she came back to our stand full of praise for his kindness. Her daughter was thrilled.
Even though the publishing house is no more, I’d love to return to the festival one day. The 2025 festival is being held from 8 to 9 November, and the authors will be announced in mid-September. Last year they had a great line-up including Jean Hanff Korelitz, Nicola Yoon, New Zealander Chloe Gong and actor Matthew McConaughey, plus Stephen Graham Jones in conversation with Fargo’s Noah Hawley. Despite being in the heart of conservative Texas, author sessions were held on diversity, extremism, reproductive rights and gun violence, among others. Some of the previous panels are available to view on the festival’s website, www.texasbookfestival.org, for those who can’t be there in person.