For three wondrous days, the authors who create them brought The Westport Library’s books to life, with more than 50 writers from a vast array of genres gracing the Library’s varied spaces to celebrate stories, books, writers, and readers at StoryFest 2024, the Library’s seventh annual literary festival.
As visiting author Genna Rose Nethercott so aptly said during her Saturday evening storytelling session, “This is such a fun weekend of literary marvels.”
The festival, a celebration of the story in all its forms and of storytellers from across all media, kicked off Friday night with the unveiling of Jesse Freidin’s remarkable art exhibit, Are You OK? The Disappearing Faces of America’s Trans Youth, and the StoryFest keynote conversation between acclaimed author, editor, and essayist Roxane Gay and Oliver Radclyffe, whose highly anticipated new memoir, Frighten the Horses, about coming of age in the fourth decade of one’s life, came out this fall on Gay’s imprint.
The evening drew more than 250 to the Library’s Trefz Forum for a celebration of diversity and becoming your truest self — and of writing, reading, editing, and books, themes that carried into Saturday’s jam-packed day of panels, podcasts, author conversations, and book readings.
Saturday was a true celebration of storytellers and storytelling, with more than 1,200 fans packing the Library starting with the first panel discussions at 10 am and staying until the day wrapped up 11 hours later.
Photos by KT Kaminski, Westport Library
There was truly something for every reader and book lover:
Nine panels in all — five in the Trefz Forum, three in Brooks Place, and a cartooning panel held in the Sheffer Gallery, currently hosting the exhibit, Cartoon County: The Golden Age of Cartooning in Connecticut. After each panel, the authors congregated in the StoryFest Book Store to sign books and chat with admirers.
A series of children’s book readings held in the Children’s Library, featuring Diana Sussman, Isi Hendrix, Karen L. Swanson, Hal Johnson, and Lisa Korsten Price.
Two live podcast recordings — Fearmongers (one of the Library’s community partnership podcasts) with host Clay McLeod Chapman and guests Rachel Harrison and P. Djèlí Clark, and Minorities in Publishing with host Jennifer Baker and guests Shannon C.F. Rogers and Don P. Hooper.
A moving tribute to the late Westport literary icon Sybil Steinberg, with books from her personal collection on sale in the StoryFest Book Store.
The awarding of the 2024 Westport Prize for Literature to Alejandro Puyana for Freedom is a Feast, his dazzling debut novel, a multigenerational saga of love and revolution set in the author’s native Venezuela.
And the evening closed, fittingly, with the Lundberg Masters storytelling event: The Power of Story, featuring a puppet show and tale from Nethercott, short stories from Chapman and Gabino Iglesias, a preview of her new project by May Cobb, a poem from Cynthia Pelayo, a recounting by Freidin of the most impactful stories from his book project, and a recollection from Northeast Storytelling President ChaChanna Simpson, all moderated by Kerstin Rao.
StoryFest officially wrapped Sunday, with a PitchFest workshop delivered by Bloom Writers’ Studio, a day for potential future StoryFest writers to get experience pitching their projects to publishers and learning what it takes to get their stories told to wider audience.
