The Decatur Book Festival

In February 2005, while driving back from the South Carolina Book Festival with a Marc Fitten, Daren Wang wondered aloud: Why could Columbia sustain a successful festival while metropolitan Atlanta could not?

Atlanta is well known for its many festivals: Dogwood, Music Midtown, The Inman Park Neighborhood Festival, and Virginia Highland Summerfest, just to name a few. These events shape the summer landscape of Atlanta. But despite several earlier attempts, there still was no free festival celebrating the written word. Over the course of that drive from Columbia, Wang hatched a plan to establish a book festival modeled after the overwhelmingly successful Decatur Arts Festival.

Soon, Wang, Fitten, and fellow Monkey-with-typewriter Tom Bell had concocted a new hare-brained scheme, The Decatur Book Festival.

(Lilia Bell, Tom Bell and Marc Fitten at Wine in Words in Dahlonega, GA--an early precursor of the festival)

Wang had been putting on book events in Atlanta for years. The syndicated radio series The Spoken Word had been launched as a series of events at the Georgian Terrace, and would bring such big name artists as Coleman Barks, Philip Glass, Margaret Edson and Bruce Sterling to Atlanta. Working with Bell, Fitten, and wine-maker Doug Paul, Wang threw Wine and Words in the Spring of 2005 which featured Connie May Fowler, Barbara Robinette Moss, and Jack Riggs, just to name a few. In September, the Verb launch party would draw over 300 attendees with Robert Olen Butler, Elizabeth Dewberry, Tom Lux, Marjory Wentworth, and Caroline Herring all performing.With the early September date and the Decatur location, it has become known as the Decatur Book Festival-beta test.

(A full house at the Seen Gallery for the Verb Launch, September 2005)

It would take another year of nearly full-time volunteer work to bring together the inaugural festival, which drew over 100 authors and a stunning 50,000 people to the downtown Decatur square over Labor Day weekend 2006.

The event got rave reviews, and it was clear that festival visitors and authors had fallen in love with Decatur. The city’s appeal––a combination of supportive local businesses and restaurants, eager and able volunteers, and the ability to walk easily from venue to venue––contributed greatly to the remarkable festival spirit.

“We always knew Atlanta had a thriving writing and book community, but it needed a centerpiece to bring all the parts together,” said Tom Bell, now the festival’s program director. “That’s what the festival does best.”

“Publishers have come to see the DBF as a significant part of the nationwide publishing landscape,” said Wang, now DBF executive director. “The sponsors that make this all possible have stayed committed to us through a tough economy. In a lot of ways, it feels like a coming of age for us.”

(Billy Collins, Daren Wang and Mayor Bill Floyd, backstage at the 2009 Festival Keynote)

The Decatur Book Festival has come of age and promises to bring Atlanta together around books for many years to come, all the while maintaining a spirit of fun and childlike wonder as we celebrate the written and spoken word.