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

After 20 years of flirting with each other, checking out each other's talents and parking lots across the railroad tracks, Eddie and Agnes are gettin' hitched, and Verb is officiating.
We posted the wedding announcement in the AJC yesterday, courtesy Jamie Gumbrecht.
These two are made for each other. Agnes with her stately 817-seat Presser Hall, flawless sight-lines, gorgeous windows, comfy seats and great acoustics. Eddie with his expertise, experience, charm, and rolodex. Like Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel, you can only wonder how it took so long.
We're working on several concert bookings right now, and we hope to have butts in seats in mid-to-late February.
One of the reasons I came to Atlanta over 20 years ago was because of the vibrant music scene. And Trackside Tavern (then managed by Eddie) was a magical place for me back then. The level of talent played on any given night is staggering. Everyone in Atlanta has heard the stories: The Indigo Girls, Sugarland, John Mayer (used to work the door), Shawn Mullins. And Eddie carried all of that with him when he moved up to Eddie's Attic.
I've always wanted to find a way to work in music promotion, but it is famously a nasty, cutthroat biz. The folks at Agnes Scott and Eddie's Attic are a dream team, and I expect this to be a great, lively series and a really fun new addition to the cultural scene in Decatur and Metro Atlanta.

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.

Before Verb productions did anything else, it was a publisher of great fiction, poetry and music. Verb: An Audioquarterly has been anthologized in the Norton anthology of Literature (10th Edition), and has gotten great press over the years. Below is a bit of history, a bit of press, and some audio clips. Relaunched in 2005, Verb was named one of the top ten magazines of that year by Library Journal.

Reviews from the press

What happens when you take a quality literary journal and send it out on a CD? A great sampling of contemporary poetry, fiction and music, as Verb adeptly proves with its inaugural issue.--Lit Kicks

Verb ably demonstrates that the sound of poetry and fiction being read aloud reaches into territories that simply cannot be mapped by the printed page. --Library Journal

... broadens the traditional definition of a literary journal. --Poets and Writers

For those who think it's OK to read while driving, allow us to introduce you to Verb--a literature-focused audio quarterly, combining prose, poetry and original music on two CDs.--Paste Magazine

The latest literary trend harkens back to ancient oral tradition. This Atlanta-based quarterly audio magazine combines fiction, poetry, and music from many of the country's best writers.--Southern Living

Contemporary scribes like Marjory Wentworth read their own verse on Verb, an audio-literary magazine that launched last month, promising "great writing in a new form."--

Fortunately, not a speck of dust settles on Verb's debut issue, thanks mostly to the choice of nervy, compelling fiction.--Creative Loafing

Sometimes a helping hand comes from the unlikeliest of people. Some are friends. Some are associates. Some are strangers. But as a rule, you should never ever expect an assist from the deceased. That is unless you’re Daren Wang, and it’s your mission to put together something the world has never seen or heard before.--The Charleston City Paper

I see all of these developments as great supplements to my reading regime, but I wonder if one day, hearing literature will be more common than reading it. Could the printed word ever go the way of the eight-track? --The Book Standard

Listen to fiction, music and poetry while you jog. --St. Petersburg Times

The two-CD first volume retails for $19.95 and contains a blend of original fiction, poetry, and music that ... is unlike anything else that's available. --Publishers Weekly

Hundreds of literary magazines crowd the market, but a new one being launched Sept. 10 is bound to be heard loud and clear.--The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Verb is an idea whose time has come, an audioquarterly that features prizewinning writers like Tom Franklin and Robert Olen Butler reading their own work, musicians as good as Peter Case, and poetry too. Verb has everything but an aural centerfold.
--William Gay Author of I HATE TO SEE THAT EVENING SUN GO DOWN and THE LONG HOME

Verb 1991

The very first iteration of Verb came about in 1991 when Daren Wang, Ed Hall, Trey Wood and Nicole Williams launched a literary magazine on cassette. We really had no idea what we were doing, but the issue came together pretty well. I still have a 1" master tape with all this material on it, but haven't seen a machine that would play it in years. Luckily, we moved it to DAT for duplication, and that still survives as well. Now it's available for download--a technological breakthrough. Kodac Harrison and Dave Webb supplied the music. Inexorable Progress by Mary Hood. She allowed us to reprint this fine, but grim story. Gregory Nichol reads. My Big Dog by Zac Imboden. PETA would not be pleased. Read by Eileen Kimble. Scenes from the Cafe de la Luna by Nicole Williams. Nicole narrated this also. Quirky and fun. There is another issue which requires a DAT transfer. Someday.

Verb 1

Verb 1 features poetry from Thomas Lux, Marjory Wentworth, and James Dickey, Fiction from Robert Olen Butler, Tom Franklin and Ha Jin, and music from Stuart Dybek. Opening Hungry Gap Time by Thomas Lux Hitler's Slippers by Thomas Lux Man Peddling Next to His Bicycle by Thomas Lux A Clearing, A Meadow, in Deep Forest by Thomas Lux My Malaria by Thomas Lux My Malaria by Stuart Dybek In Broad Daylight pt. 1 by Ha Jin (read by Jennifer Deer) In Broad Daylight pt. 2 by Ha Jin (read by Jennifer Deer) In Broad Daylight pt. 3 by Ha Jin (read by Jennifer Deer) In Broad Daylight pt. 4 by Ha Jin (read by Jennifer Deer) In Broad Daylight pt. 5 by Ha Jin (read by Jennifer Deer)

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