The Kerrytown BookFest

continued

I'll have another chance on Sunday, September 12 — along with more than a dozen other demonstrations, from paper marbling to leather paring. I'm hoping to catch tours of the city's last working Linotype machine at Ben Burkhart's Fourth Avenue shop, and one of the state's last hand bookbinderies at Bessenberg on Fifth; hear honorary chairs Joe and Beth Fitzsimmons describe their very different book collections (his: Antarctica, hers: ABCs); and this time I'll try to tear myself away from the booths long enough to catch a talk at Hollander's, where festival sparkplugs Tom and Cindy Hollander have a promising lineup of speakers on topics ranging from type design to book appraisal.

Last spring, the big festival over on North U briefly thought it had landed literary lion Gore Vidal as its keynote speaker. Next fall, I think the KDA BookFest should go after Davy Rothbart. After all, the irreverent inventor of Found magazine lives right down the street by Wheeler Park. He's a neighbor.   

[Originally published in September, 2004.]