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Published: April 4, 2010
Writers, readers, and book-lovers will all be busy May 7th through the 9th, as CAP presents Spring (W)rites, the inaugural Finger Lakes Literary Festival. Partially supported with grant funding from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the Tompkins County Tourism Program, the weekend-long festival features a constellation of 18 literary themed events, from workshops and panel discussions for writers to readings and performances by local poets, playwrights, essayists and novelists.
According to Brett Bossard, Executive Director of CAP, it's no accident that the festival coincides with the first weekend of the Friends of the Library Book Sale. "We knew that the Book Sale attracts a literary, book-loving audience of thousands of people every year," says Bossard, "so the Friends of the Library were among the first people we spoke to when planning the festival." Bossard has also been pleasantly surprised by the eagerness of the growing list of local participants in the fest. "We started with a small amount of NYSCA funding, so the initial plan was to coordinate a strong, but manageable, first year, with a slate of eight or ten events," says Bossard. "But once word spread that the festival was happening, it really blossomed into something much bigger, with a great deal of grassroots support from the literary community in and around Tompkins County." Partnering organizations and businesses include the Tompkins County Public Library and the Friends of the Library Book Sale, Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca College, the Community School of Music and Arts, Cornell University, Barnes & Noble, State of the Art Gallery, Cinemapolis, the Shop, the Family Reading Partnership, the Ithaca Shakespeare Company, the Wolf's Mouth Theatre Collective, the Ithaca Community Orchestra and WSKG's "Off the Page" program.
The weekend begins at 4pm on Friday, with a recording of "Off the Page" at the Borg-Warner Room of the Tompkins County Public Library. Host Bill Jaker has invited a number of local authors to discuss how the Finger Lakes area inspires and influences their work. The festival culminates on Sunday at 4pm with "The Sound of Words," the Ithaca Community Orchestra's Spring Concert, which features original compositions written to complement the poetry of Tompkins County Poet Laureate Jay Leeming and poetry competition winner Amy Li.
Sandwiched between those two events are more than a dozen readings, discussions, and workshops to suit the needs of writers and readers alike:
4:00 pm at Tompkins County Public Library - Host Bill Jaker welcomes Michelle Courtney Berry, J. Robert Lennon, Beth Saulnier, and Michael Turback for a live recording of WSKG's "Off the Page."
5:30 pm at Buffalo Street Books - Amy Dickinson will read from her book The Mighty Queens of Freeville, to celebrate its recent publication in paperback.
8:00 pm at CSMA - George Sapio presents a staged reading of his new script Better than Nothing, which was commissioned in part by a NYSCA grant.
7:00 am at the Friends of the Library Book Sale - Actors from the Ithaca Shakespeare Company will serve as troubadours, reciting the works of The Bard for the eager book shoppers waiting for the sale to open its doors.
10 am at Ithaca College's Emerson Suites - Broome County Poet Laureate, Andrei Guruianu will lead a workshop on poetry writing.
12 pm on the Commons (or in Center Ithaca, weather dependent) - The Family Reading Partnership invites families for stories told from the Big Red Chair.
1:30 pm at Ithaca College's Emerson Suites - Representatives from the Wolf's Mouth Theatre Collective and other peer critique groups will lead a panel discussion on the ins and outs of forming your own writers group.
2:00 pm at Barnes & Noble - Representatives from the Killer Coffee Club and other local book groups will lead a forum on creating reading groups.
2:30 pm at the CAP ArtSpace in Center Ithaca - Local author Irene Zahava will lead her art // REACTion workshop, encouraging participants to write their personal responses to the visual art of Amanda Vella, which will be on exhibit in the ArtSpace from May 3 to May 31.
3:00 pm at the State of the Art Gallery - Essays and Fictions, a literary journal published in Ithaca, celebrates the launch of Volume VI with readings by contributors Bob Proehl and Stephen Poleskie.
4:00 pm at Ithaca College's Emerson Suites - Cornell's University Librarian, Anne R. Kenney will facilitate a panel discussion examining the enduring value of books in the digital age. Panelists will include Charles Brittain, Chair of the Classics Department at Cornell; Katherine Reagan, Curator of Rare Books at Cornell; and Dean Krafft, Chief Technology Strategist at Cornell University Library.
4:00 pm at Buffalo Street Books - Michael Kammen will read from his latest book Digging up the Dead, A History of Notable American Reburials.
6:00 pm at Cinemapolis - A group reading celebrating the poets of the Finger Lakes will feature all three past Tompkins County Poets Laureate-Kathryn Howd Machan, Michelle Courtney Berry and Paul Hamill-as well as current laureate Jay Leeming and Broome County Laureate, Andrei Guruianu.
8:00 pm at CSMA - The Wolf's Mouth Theatre Collective presents their latest 10 minute play festival, featuring staged readings of five brand new scripts.
9:30 pm at The Shop - Writers, readers, and poets of all kinds are welcome to join the Festival at a late-night open mic / poetry slam event at the Shop, 312 East Seneca St.
12 noon at Buffalo Street Books - Michele Brown, Book Conservator at Cornell University, will explain how to preserve books in your home library. She will discuss proper handling, environment, storage, and demonstrate simple repairs.
2:00 pm at Buffalo Street Books - Buffalo Street Books presents the fourth in its series of Works in Progress readings, featuring 10 local authors with excerpts from their latest, unpublished works.
4:00 pm at St. Paul's Methodist Church - The Ithaca Community Orchestra presents "The Sound of Words," their spring concert, featuring original poems by Jay Leeming and Amy Li, along with original compositions by Tom Schneller and Zachary Wadsworth.
The full schedule is available here.
