Books, balloons and belonging

We do what it says on the T shirt... Me and my co-organiser Tracy Bullock with Graeme Hill, the Mayor of Ware, who welcomed us to Southern Maltings Arts Centre in Ware, and fellow councillor Damien Scully.

​Books, balloons and belonging…
This was the fourth year of the Herts Book Festival, taking place in Hertford on the Saturday, in the new BEAM theatre, and Ware on the Sunday at Southern Maltings Arts Centre. I’m one of a very small group of volunteer organisers (all women), who have created the festival pretty much from scratch. In doing so we’ve tapped into an amazing network of people who write books, people who read books and people who dedicate themselves to helping others, especially children, to discover books.
The heart of the festival is the Author Market, a kind of farmers’ market for writers. Authors take a stall to sell their books. This is a challenging concept, because most authors are not natural salespeople, but it works because they’re not really selling, but connecting with the members of the public who come to this free event, and communicating their love of their stories and characters.
The Book Festival has something for all ages, and it was lovely to see the parents arrive pushing buggies and bringing tiny ones to hear the ‘Baby Rhyme Time’ sessions run by Hertford library and Ware library. Children’s authors make up about half of the Author Market and they always go above and beyond for kids, doing story reading, offering activities or a cuddly animal to hold. This year we attracted people to the festival by handing out balloons in the town and the chatter in the venue was regularly punctuated by a pop and a small child’s wail… before they were handed another balloon.
At the adult end of the scale, there are writers in every genre you can think of – crime, romantasy with fairies, horror, history, fantasy with goblins, futuristic dystopia, psychological thrillers, poetry, rom-coms…
Most of our authors are self-published or are with small, independent publishers. They don’t have the marketing power of a major publisher behind them, or the ability to get into bookshops nationwide. Festivals and bookfairs like this are vital for these authors. What is really striking too is how much the Herts Book Festival authors have become a community, supporting each other, giving tips on marketing, cover design and so on.
It's not always easy for a writer to say, ‘I’m an author’. There’s a lot of snobbishness in the literary world against authors who are self-or indie-published. But ultimately it’s the readers who decide whether a book is good enough or not, and these are authors who are brave enough to face the reader directly. At the Herts Book Festival, I hope, all authors can feel they belong.
Looking forward to next year…
​www.hertsbookfestival.org 

One of my favourite events at the Festival was the author panel I hosted on 'Where history meets folklore'. We were fortunate to have two excellent authors speaking: Nick Jubber (with the glasses) whose new book 'Monsterland' takes you on a journey into the dark imagination of humankind with an exploration of monsters around the world, from Transylvania to Japan to Mexico; and Christopher Hadley, whose book 'Hollow Places' investigates a mysterious story much closer to home, that of Piers Shonks who lived in the Hertfordshire village of Brent Pelham (his tomb is in the church) and who fought a dragon. Before this session, Amy and Andy of Tales From The Hart performed their spirited and highly entertaining version of this tale of a home grown dragon-slayer (sadly without their usual fire-breathing display...)