After a seven-month delay, the inaugural Hot Springs Book Festival will finally start on Thursday and run through Saturday with multiple authors scheduled to participate.
Originally set for Sept. 17-18 last year, the event had to be delayed due to an increase in COVID-19 cases.
"We have five stellar authors that are going to be giving presentations that we booked that all have relevance to Arkansas," Paul Kagebein, the library's adult services programmer, said.
David Hill, author of the bestseller "The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice," will kick things off Thursday with a discussion at The Legendary Vapors, 315 Park Ave.
Bitty Martin, author of the "True Crime" mystery, "Snake Eyes: Murder in a Southern Town," will have a book talk and signing at the Garland County Library on Friday, followed by Corabel Shofner, author of the children's book, "Almost Paradise," and Ayana Gray, author of the YA book, "Beast of Pray," who will hold discussions and book signings at the library on Saturday.
The final event of the festival will feature author Elizabeth Eckford, a member of the Little Rock Nine, who will speak at 4 p.m. Saturday at Main Street Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School.
After all these months of working toward the festival, which he hopes will be an annual event, Kagebein said he feels "relieved and excited."
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"We already laid a lot of the groundwork for having it in the fall, so picking it back up here in the spring was just a matter of reorganizing schedules and, you know, reconnecting with authors," Erin Baber, the library's marketing manager, said.
"We didn't have the exact same lineup, but we were able to add a few people that I'm really happy with," Baber said.
"It's a natural fit for a library to have something like this and we also had partners. We have Sarah Richardson at the Literacy Council of Garland County and then the Adult Education Department at National Park College," Kagebein said.
"So all of us came together and organized this and it's just been over a year in the making," he said.
"I think we started with Dave Hill because we wanted to have -- I mean by now everyone in Hot Springs has at least heard of his book, a lot of them have read it -- but having Dave Hill talk at the Vapors is just, you know, it's special," Baber said, noting the Vapors event is already sold out.
After Hill, Baber said they decided to stick with either Arkansas or Hot Springs-related authors.
"So that's how we got Corabel Shofner, she wrote a middle-grade book about a family who was going through Hot Springs, Arkansas, so they're briefly in downtown. And Ayana Gray now lives in Little Rock, and hers is really cool, it's a New York Times bestselling opener, it's called 'Beast of Pray,' it's been wonderfully reviewed, so I'm really happy to have her join us," Baber said.
As for Eckford, her experience was "one of the most iconic moments in Arkansas history right there," Kagebein said, "And then Bitty Martin, she's a member of the Garland County Historical Society, and her book of local interest is receiving a lot of buzz and publicity. I'm pretty proud of this diverse lineup."
"When this kind of idea first came up, Adam Webb and I, when I was first hired at the Literacy Council, we met just to talk about how could the library and literacy council partner, what would that look like," Richardson said.
"I said I think this is a great idea to promote just literacy in general in our community and increase access to authors to kids, to the local community. The impact of low literacy in our community is pretty huge," she said.
"This was just one more way to reach the community and increase awareness about literacy but also just promote Garland County community as a reading community," Richardson said, noting some good came from the delay.
"I think it gave us a little time to refine it even. You know, make a few changes for the better, and we hope to keep this going," she said. "This is an ongoing event that we get to look forward to now."
All of the events are free, but each, except for the Eckford event, requires preregistration.