The Minnesota magazine Rain Taxi hosted its yearly Twin Cities Book Festival this weekend at the State Fairgrounds, with over 140 exhibitors for readers of all ages to enjoy.
Tucked away in The Eco Experience building, the book festival hosted local booksellers, publishers and authors on Saturday. For 24 years, the event centered on local authors and literature of all genres for the visitors.
“We’re focused on trying to create a snapshot of the year,” said Eric Lorberer, editor and executive director of Rain Taxi. “We could probably have a week-long festival and still not have time for it to really show every single person’s new book.”
The festival originally started at the Loft Literary Center but grew in venue sizes each year until they settled at the Minnesota Fairgrounds, according to Kelly Everding, Rain Taxi designer and operations director.
While featured authors spoke at panels in the four corners of the building, visitors of all ages were encouraged to wander the space. Local booksellers like Magers & Quinn Booksellers and The Book House in Dinkytown lined the back row, offering a selection of their books while the center of the room was packed with booths.
“There’s just a big buzz of energy and positivity,” Everding said. “That’s kind of my favorite part. Just watching people come and go, all different kinds of people going up and down the book fair aisles and discovering new books.”
Some booths hosted author book signings while others offered specialties like Steve Prokop’s bookbinding, AutismLM’s educational short stories and Six Orchids Boutique’s blind date with a book. For $30, visitors could pick out a book based on a quick summary of the plot, a handmade bookmark, two stickers and a tote bag with original art on it to carry their purchase.
Button Poetry, a Twin Cities Book Festival regular and iconic publisher in the poetry world, also hosted local authors as well as a selection of their poets’ published works for visitors to look through.
Tanesha Kozler, director of publishing operations for Button Poetry, said that the festival reflects one of the core values of their group by offering the opportunity to connect with the community.
“The thing that makes it so exciting is that you get to have a direct connection and relationship with the people that buy your books, or even people that are just interested in literary spaces and reading,” Kozler said.
Kozler described an interaction with a visitor in the early hours of the festival. The father was sent by his daughter with a list of booths to visit for her, including Button Poetry as she had submitted her own poetry to them in the past. The father left the festival with some free mementos from the booth to prove his visit.
“It was cool to see the way that someone’s parent would go out of their way to support a passion of their child,” Kozler said.
A few rows down from them, the Aya Collective hosted participating authors Jameelah Crawford and Ayolanda Mack to represent the organization at the festival. The collective centers the work of Black women, according to its founder Ebony Aya.
The book festival presented an opportunity for authors of the collective to meet with the community who had read their work, as well as those who had not.
“That’s the underlying message of the collective, that these stories are written by us, but it’s not just for us,” Aya said.
Everding and Lorberer said they hope visitors leave with some new books and an understanding of the passion and hard work books represent.
“It takes a lot of effort to write and it takes even more effort and belief to invest in publishing a book and trying to make it appear beautiful and appear to be something that people want to carry with them and have as a part of their lives,” Lorberer said.
Rain Taxi will host a final event on Nov. 2 with New York Times bestselling cartoonist Jeffrey Brown to bookend the festival before they begin planning for next year’s book festival.
“Books really represent the pinnacle of humanity,” Lorberer said.