The return of the Louisiana Book Festival

When last year’s Louisiana Book Festival was canceled due to state budget cuts, State Librarian Rebecca Hamilton and her team did not have time to seek private funding for a high-quality festival. Though the festival costs roughly $500,000 to produce, it generates $2 million in revenue for Baton Rouge—in one day. Without the funds to produce the festival in 2010, Hamilton remained determined to make sure it returned stronger than ever. She has succeeded, and the event returns to downtown Baton Rouge this month with a lineup of authors that includes crowd-pleasers Robert Olen Butler, Roy Blount Jr., Julie Smith, John Biguenet, Tim Gautreaux and Andre Dubus III.

Hamilton credits Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, an avid reader with a similar commitment to the festival, for the revival.

In addition, a bequest by the late Sally Farrell—who helped to build the modern Louisiana library system—to the State Library enabled the library to fund the Louisiana Book Festival and honor her memory at the same time.

The festival has been canceled once before, in 2005. As the state began to recover from Hurricane Katrina, however, the next year’s festival attendance doubled. Hamilton had confidence this phenomenon would recur after Farrell’s gift made it possible for the festival to return in 2011.

Her faith may be well placed, with dozens of nationally and locally popular authors scheduled to attend. Cokie and Steven Roberts will talk about their book on interfaith families, George Rodrigue will read his children’s book Are You Blue Dog’s Friend? and Andrei Codrescu will present Whatever Gets You Through the Night, his retelling of The Arabian Nights.

Many writers previously featured in 225 will be on hand, including David Madden with Abducted By Circumstance, Kenneth Holditch with Dinner with Tennessee Williams, Neal Walsh with The Prospect of Magic, Sonny Brewer and Barb Johnson representing Don’t Quit Your Day Job and the editors of The Dictionary of Louisiana French.

John Ed Bradley, Olympia Vernon, Laurie Lynn Drummond, James Gordon Bennett, Moira Crone and editors Judy Kahn and Nolde Alexius will represent The Best of LSU Fiction on two panels. Southern periodicals like Country Roads and The Oxford American will celebrate their writers. The Southern Review will honor its late editor, Jeanne Leiby, and writer Mark Richard, whose Pushcart Prize-winning memoir was excerpted in the journal last year.

The 2011 Louisiana Book Festival will take place Sat., Oct. 29, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.—that’s an hour earlier than usual, to accommodate many of last year’s participants plus new programming. As at previous festivals, WordShops and the annual author party are scheduled the Friday before, Oct. 28. This year’s festival will begin with a presentation by former Gov. Edwin Edwards about his recent biography.

For complete details and a schedule of events, visit louisianabookfestival.org.