The Network had an exhibitor’s booth at last weekend’s Greensboro Bound Literary Festival. We were happy to be a small part of this new and, by all accounts, wildly successful endeavor.
While the names of the headliners were large and not always local, the event had the feeling of showing up to a massive (and massively fun) party where all our friends were hanging out. And those folks we met for the first time already felt familiar, because all of us had come to the Greensboro Cultural Center for the same reason: to celebrate the written word.
The weather that week looked ominous, and indeed, a few days before the festival, the exhibitors received word that we were going to be setting up on the first floor of the Cultural Center instead of outside under a tent, as originally planned.
It turned out better than we could have hoped.
Positioned between two main event spaces, we talked to so countless authors and festival-goers who stopped by to see what we were all about or just to say hello.
Time to name drop! Over the course of the weekend we chatted with authors who were part of the festival lineup including Ellen Bush, Jeremy B. Jones, Michael Parker, Andrew Saulters, Julia Ridley Smith, Mark Smith-Soto, Michele Young-Stone, and Lynn York. We chatted with literary organizers like Jacob Paul, Beth Sheffield, and the good folks at Bookmarks Festival of Books and Authors, the NC Literary Map, Our State, and more.
And, perhaps best of all, we made tons of new friends.
Special thanks to Steve Cushman, Carla Harper, and Valerie Nieman for helping to staff the exhibitor booth over the weekend.
If you haven’t already, you can hear NCWN membership coordinator Deonna Kelli Sayed and another festival founder, Steve Mitchell, interviewed on Gate City Live, where they chat about the festival.