The Festival is over now. I'm packing my bags (heavier now) and getting ready to be shuttled back to the airport. I'm looking forward to going home, but I'm also a little sad it's over. The energy here over the weekend, the sheer number of people interested in books, has been amazing. Every event I attended was completely full, and the whole festival area crawled with Atlantans.



There are too many highlights to list, but the most amazing event was probably Natasha Trethewey's reading with her father, Eric. Natasha's style is more restrained, lyrical, oblique, and Eric's more forward, narrative, blunt—and the interplay was amazing. I've not been to many readings where the readers alternate turns at the microphone like this, but this was definitely the best one I've ever heard, as the poems and the poetic styles perfectly complemented and amplified one another.

I enjoyed talking with Natasha throughout the weekend, who introduced me to Kevin Young, who gave a wonderful reading from his new book Dear Darkness, and Ron Rash, a writer I've been following for a while now, probably the Appalachian writer you need to be reading. I got to see Dan Albergotti again, who continues to amaze me with his collection The Boatloads, and Juliana Gray, who's almost completed a new manuscript, Daniel Wallace, and the inimitable John Egerton and John T. Edge. I met David Kirby, finally, early in the festival, and was nervous to read with him and Tony Morris, and Chad Prevost, all extremely funny gentlemen; reading with such hilarious poets is probably the most difficult thing in the world.

How Decatur brings this together, I'll never know, but it is amazing, an event so large and well-attended. It gives me, and many others, I'm sure, a lot of hope for books.

Atlanta, Decatur, I can't wait to be back.