Book fest 'natural fit' for UW campus

University of Wisconsin-Waukesha Foundation Board member Kathleen Eull recently interrupted her duties as coordinator of events for the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books to respond to several Waukesha NOW questions about the June 18-19 festival. Our questions and answers follow.

WN: This is the first running of the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books. Is the plan that this will be an annual event at the UW-Waukesha?

KE: Yes, it will be an annual event. In fact, we already have authors talking to us about next year.

WN: Is your festival patterned on others? For instance, there is a huge one annually in Chicago. Where did the idea for the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books originate?

KE: The UW-Waukesha Foundation Board had been discussing ways in which we could help support the faculty on the campus. These scholars are well-recognized in their fields for the amazing writing they are doing, but are really hidden gems in their own community.

A book festival felt like a natural fit. When you look around the country, there are some great book festivals out there. You mentioned Chicago and, of course, the Boston Book Festival hit with a splash in 2009, but the one that really caught our eye was the Tucson Festival of Books.

In fact, Laraine O'Brien, our board vice president, spends time each year in Tucson and attended the 2009 Tucson festival. She came back excited by what she saw and brought the idea to the foundation. We already have quality book festivals happening in Wisconsin. We're book lovers!

What we liked about the all-ages Tucson model that we adopted and what really distinguishes the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books is the idea of having everything centrally located on a university campus. We have included music and art and have tried to give it the flavor of a Wisconsin summer festival.

WN: How and why did you become involved with the festival - and what do you hope it accomplishes?

KE: I personally became involved with the festival as a member of the foundation board. It seemed like a great way to combine my passions for education, the arts and the UW-Waukesha campus. As I mentioned earlier, one of our goals was to showcase campus authors. I think the festival is a great forum.

Looking at the broader picture, I hope the event really calls attention to the importance of literacy and what the seemingly simple act of opening a book does for the imagination and our ability to think critically about our world. The arts, in all media, allow us a way to talk about our past and discuss - even reinvent - our present and future. It is never too early to begin reading with your children, or too late. As adults, we need to stop thinking about reading as a guilty pleasure and embrace it as an essential act.

WN: Is the local tie (i.e. Wisconsin) emphasis something you very definitely want to feature?

KE: You are absolutely correct. As the first committees began to meet, it was clear that having a Wisconsin emphasis was something everyone wanted to see. We wanted to be able to support the great authors in Wisconsin, or those having Wisconsin ties, with this kind of exposure. There are some wonderful stories from novelist Kris Radish and poet Scott Zieher, who both attended UW-Waukesha, to mystery writer Reed Farrell Coleman, who lived in Milwaukee for a period of time and tries to make regular book stops here even though he is now located on Long Island.

It really is remarkable how much literary activity we have, not just in Wisconsin in general, but in Waukesha and the surrounding counties. It is what helps make our quality of life so high.