from the December 18, 2009 edition

Daren Wang, executive director of the Decatur Book Festival, was on a road trip to Washington D.C. and New York City in 1996 when he had an epiphany. The New York native had been working in Atlanta for the past few years as a production artist for several publishing companies. He had dabbled in public radio and in 1992 had received some national press for launching Verb, an audio literary journal, but had no real background in radio. Still, he promised himself, “In six months, I’m going to switch over to public radio.”
“I wrote up a proposal for a 13-part series on Southern writers called “Porches” and I sent it to a guy who had started an online bookstore in his garage in Washington,” Wang said. “It was Jeff Bezos.” The fledgling Amazon.com agreed to underwrite the cost of the series, and a career in the arts was launched.
“Six months and one day, I turned in my notice,” said Wang, referring to the road-trip promise to himself. “It was a tiny underwriting check that turned into three years of work.”
In 1999, “Porches: The South and Her Writers” was completed and broadcast on public radio. Wang had spent the last two years driving around the South and interviewing 40 authors about Southern fiction, including the last interview with legendary Atlanta author James Dickey. Upon the series’ completion, local PBS affiliate WABE offered Wang a position as producer for “Between The Lines,” a weekly book review program hosted by Valerie Jackson, wife of the late mayor Maynard Jackson.
“There was a real pent-up demand from publishers to get onto the Atlanta airwaves,” he said. For a year and a half, Wang served as the producer for the show, which still runs on WABE.
In 2001, Wang went to work for Ian Lloyd-Jones, then a partial owner of The Georgian Terrace. Lloyd-Jones had recently bought New York City’s legendary Algonquin Hotel and had launched a literary program there called The Spoken Word. He was hoping to launch the series in Atlanta as well, and invited Wang as well as other Atlanta arts organization representatives to the hotel to pitch the idea. Wang was excited by the concept and asked Lloyd-Jones for the job.
“He said, ‘I have this bag of sand and it has a hole in it,’ ” referring to the expense of running the hotel, Wang said. “If you can find a way to put some sand in, I’ll give you the job.” Wang lined up the Southeastern Bookseller’s Association to underwrite the series, which recorded book events nationwide and featured book reviews by Tom Bell, a local book critic. The show was a success and ran for five years, three in syndication on forty stations around the country. As the series was winding down, Wang received the inspiration for his next project: the Decatur Book Festival.
Wang was attending the South Carolina Book Festival in Columbia with a friend and realized there was no similar festival in the metro area. “I said to my friend, ‘It makes no sense that there is this great festival in Columbia and nothing in Atlanta,’ ” he said. When Wang returned to Decatur, he and the critic Bell started making plans for the festival convening a group of local arts advocates and community leaders including Bill Starr, executive director of the Georgia Center for the Book and Alice Murray, a marketing director for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Decatur Book Festival is a 3-day free book party that occurs over Labor Day weekend in downtown Decatur. Launched in 2006, the festival is currently the largest independent book festival in the country and the fourth largest overall. Featuring author readings and book signings, the festival has hosted more than 600 authors and 190,000 attendees over the past four years.
While Wang is reluctant to put definite numbers on the festival’s impact to Decatur’s economy he said, “I know that half a dozen of the local businesses tell me that its the busiest weekend of the year for them.”
“One of the reasons the festival is successful for local businesses is the format,” Wang said. The staggered schedule of events throughout the day allows festival attendees plenty of time to visit local businesses. The festival also gives its authors gift cards to use at downtown businesses which both supports the community and gives attendees a chance to interact with authors personally.
“It’s a convergence of good ideas,” said Lynn Menne, director of community development for the city of Decatur, of the book festival. In addition to the boost it gives local business, Menne said, “This type of event literally puts us on the map. You can’t put a price on that.”
In the spring of 2009, Wang launched Agnes Writes, a series of creativity and writing classes for the Decatur community on the campus of Agnes Scott College, a Decatur Book Festival sponsor.
“With Daren’s connection to the college, it was a natural next step for us,” said Michelle Hall, associate vice president for student life and community affairs. “We are always looking at what we provide for Decatur and the community,” she said.
The writing series provides both a new profit center for the university and a way to raise the institution’s profile. The 2010 edition will feature five classes from such nationally known writers as novelist David Fulmer and young adult author Terra Elan McEvoy. Agnes Writes inaugural year was a success, and the second year will be better than the first, Hall said.
Wang’s latest endeavor is Eddie and Agnes Presents, a concert series partnership between Agnes Scott College and Decatur music scene veteran Eddie Owen.
The concert series will be held in the university’s 800-seat Presser Hall and consist of 10-15 shows a year beginning in February. Wang will serve as the chief promoter of the shows and he has tapped Owen, manager and booker of Decatur acoustic music venue Eddie’s Attic to select the line-up. “This to me, feels like one of those ‘Doh!’ moments,” said Wang. “You have this great old venue and you’ve got Eddie Owen, who has a 25-year track record in the music business,” he said.
“I’m extremely excited about working with Daren on the Eddie and Agnes series,” said Owen. The idea first occurred to him 15 years ago when his wife, an Agnes Scott grad, was working on the campus, he said. Owen said the concert series has “upped the ante for community involvement at Agnes Scott.” “Daren’s track record with the success of the book festival and having such a great little theater will make my job very easy.”
For Wang, creativity is a real commodity. “It’s something you can sell and make a living with,” he said. “I often think of myself as getting revenge on all the English majors doing business,” he said. “I’m the business management guy doing all the book stuff.”
(c)2009 Atlanta Business Chronicle