Jackson Hole News

Western Book Conferences & Festivals

Equality State Book Fair Celebrates Regional Writers in Wyoming

By Nina McConigley, Guest Writer, 10-20-10

Equality State Book Festival
Where: Casper, Wyoming
When: Every other year, usually in September. The next festival is scheduled for Fall 2012.
What: Taking place in windy Casper, Wyoming, the Equality State Book Festival is one of Wyoming’s biggest literary events. Put on every other year at Casper College, the third Equality State Book Festival was held on September 24 and 25 in conjunction with the 24th annual Casper College/ARTCORE Literary Conference. Almost twenty authors and illustrators gathered in Casper for a variety of literary events: readings, panel discussions, book signings, creative writing craft talks, a gala banquet, and a night poetry slam.
Cost: Free except for tickets to the gala banquet.

Nina McConigley, who has participated in the last three Equality State Book Festivals, offers her report on the event.

Writers, artists, and lovers of all things literary gathered at the third annual Equality State Book Festival, which took place in Casper, Wyoming, September 24-25.

This year’s participants included Jack Gantos, award-winning novelists Jaimee Wriston Colbert and John Vernon, children’s author and illustrator Zak Pullen, teaching talent Gene Gagliano, poets Ravi Shankar and Robert Wrigley, Alaskan author and illustrator Ray Troll, and Idaho memoirist and novelist Kim Barnes, along with many others. Nonfiction notable Lee Gutkind, judge of the 2010 Wyoming Arts Council fellowship contest, also read with recipients of this year’s fellowships at the fellowship prize reading.

University of Wyoming professors David Romtvedt and Jeff Lockwood led this year’s craft talks. Romtvedt, a poet, taught two classes, “What Do You Make: The Ethics of a Writer’s Work” and “What You Say and How You Say It: Clarity, Simplicity, Sincerity.” Lockwood, who originally came to UW as a professor of Entomology, now teaches in the department of philosophy and in the MFA program in creative writing. Lockwood also taught two classes, “Tales from the Dark Side: Nature as Negative Metaphor,” and “Less is Different: The Possibilities of Short-form Nonfiction.”

The festival held several amazing readings. Larry Watson read from Montana 1948 and Other Fiction: A Writer’s Landscape. Kim Barnes, whose new novel is forthcoming, read from her work and later talked with Lee Gutkind on a panel about writing nonfiction. Robert Wrigley read his poetry, and John Vernon read from Lucky Billy. Jaimee Wriston Colbert read from her novel Shark Girls.

Wyoming Arts Council fellowship judge Lee Gutkind and this year’s WAC fellowship winners, Joel Burdess of Casper, Jayme Feary of Jackson, and Pam Galbreath of Laramie, all gave stellar readings in the Goodstein Library. In the interest of full disclosure, I emceed the readings and also read, as I am the 2010 winner Blanchan/Doubleday writing award from the Arts Council. Jayme Feary even brought a reading sidekick – his dog Woof.

The event ended with a late-night poetry slam emceed by Casper poet George Vlastos. Held at Metro Coffee, I am not sure if it was the caffeine or the poetic energy that made the room come alive!

Day two of the festival opened with Australian-Wyomingite Paul Taylor’s storytelling. Taylor incorporates the didgeridoo into his work and storytelling. Panels on illustration also were the focus later in the morning, with illustrators Zak Pullen, Ray Troll, and Russell Hawley talking about their art. Children’s authors Jack Gantos spoke about his work, and author Gene Gagliano also discussed children’s literature when he conferred awards on Wyoming children who are already budding authors.

One of the most interesting things about the festival is the incorporation of Western history into literature. Besides panels on how to do historical research for one’s own writing, Tom Rea, Ilja Nieuwland, and the Tate Museum staff talked about Andrew Carnegie’s dinosaur and the appearance of dinosaurs in popular culture. This panel, held at the Tate Museum, which houses a collection of over 3000 fossil and mineral specimens, was in the shadow of their latest addition – Dee, the largest Columbian Mammoth ever found in Wyoming. The full skeleton of the11,600-year-old mammoth is now in the Tate.

There were also panels on publishing, with the editors of several literary magazines on hand to help authors find homes for their work.

Besides Robert Wrigley’s amazing poetry, Ravi Shankar also wowed the crowd with his poetry. He ended his reading with a kind of poem/rap call and response, which had the audience repeating back lines to a kind of poetic beat.

Wrapping up the two days was the gala banquet at the Casper Petroleum Club. The keynote speaker, Jack Gantos, is the author of over twelve books, and renowned for his portrayal of fictional Joey Pigza, a boy with ADHD. Gantos has won a number of awards, including the Newbery Honor, the Printz Honor, and the Sibert Honor from the American Library Association, and he has been a finalist for the National Book Award. Gantos had the crowd roaring with his narrative of how he became a writer, which involves prison, drug smuggling, and a lot of humor.  He tells the complete story in his book Hole in My Life.

The Equality State Book Fair offers Wyomingites or anyone interested in all things literary two days to just fully absorb the written word, or to just enjoy sitting back and hearing a good story.

Nina McConigley teaches at the University of Wyoming. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, Asian American Literary Review, Puerto del Sol, and Forklift, Ohio. She recently finished a collection of short stories, Cowboys and East Indians. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for The Best New American Voices 2009. Her story “Curating Your Life” was a notable story in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010, edited by Dave Eggers. She is the 2010 recipient of the Wyoming Arts Council’s Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Writing Award.

Also in this series:

• Aspen Summer Words Fest: Southern Lit, Secret Hopes and a Surprise Stand-In by Jennifer Lee Sullivan

• The Tin House Summer Writers Workshop in Portland, Oregon by Bonnie ZoBell

• Summer Fishtrap in Oregon by Naomi Gibbs

• Booksellers Tell Writers Like It Is At New Conference by Jenny Shank

Plus: The Map!

• Check out NewWest’s comprehensive map and rundown of regional events, Book Festivals of the West.

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