Portland Wordstock Festival looking more and more like a reality!

[HuckleB]

Are you going to Colton's word fair?

http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/109334878112430.xml?oregonian?albs

"The Wordstock Festival has authors, confirmed dates, a director and an impressive list of sponsors.

What began as a gleam in Portland writer Larry Colton's eye is well on its way to becoming a reality. The inaugural literary festival and book fair will be April 19-24 at the Oregon Convention Center, Keller Auditorium and other venues around town.

Several prominent authors have been signed up, including Norman Mailer, John Irving, Alice Sebold, Russell Banks, Susan Orlean and Andrew Weil. Tickets won't be available for a few more weeks, but festival director Scott Poole said most of the readings by big-name writers would cost $25. A book fair at the convention center will be April 23-24, and it will feature numerous other authors, discussion panels, workshops and a children's festival. Admission to the book fair is free.

Wordstock is the brainchild of Colton, the author of "Goat Brothers" and "Counting Coup" and the co-founder of Community of Writers, a program designed to improve student writing through teacher education and putting professional writers in classrooms. Colton thought Portland needed a literary festival similar to the ones in Los Angeles and Miami and started rounding up sponsors. He's had some success: Comcast is the main festival sponsor; Borders Books & Music and Columbia Sportswear are presenting sponsors; and Merrill Lynch, Powell's Books, McCormick & Schmick's and Portland General Electric are supporting sponsors."

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This could be awesome, especially with the demise of the nine-year-old, formerly incredible Northwest Bookfest in Seattle. That once wonderful celebration of books and reading fell victim to poor management and board shenanigans. Hopefully, Oregon can avoid that. I've been lucky enough to have gone to the other biggies in the states, as well as to the incredible fest in Buenos Aires. The northwest deserves something like this. After all, Seattle and Portland are always one and two when it comes to bookstores, book sales and reading per capita.

[flamingyouth]

1. RIP, Northwest Bookfest

This sounds great, and I'm glad that Portlanders are doing this. Heck, I think I'm going to put that on my calendar. I was just down there a couple of weeks ago for a wedding and had a blast!

POWELL'S!!!! 'Nuff said! :D

[HuckleB]

2. I hope you can make it down.

The Northwest Bookfest was always on my calendar, with the first four years, down on the dock being some of the my most memorable times in the northwest. I hope it gets rejuvenated somehow, some way. I always wondered why no literacy organization in Portland didn't try to team up with the Northwest Bookfest and put on a similar event the same weekend. Authors could read and talk in one city one day and the other city on the other day, with the Saturday schedule in Seattle being the Sunday schedule in Portland and vice versa. It seems like a lot of costs could have been shared that way, making it much more viable in the long run. Alas... we'll have to hope Larry can put a good organization together. And it seems like he's doing it thus far.

As for Powell's, you said it all.