
The eighth annual AJC Decatur Book Festival was held this weekend on August 31-September 1, 2013 in Decatur, Georgia where there were more than 300 national and local authors representing all genres of books with lectures and signings.
The outdoor café quickly filled before noon with book festival visitors taking a break.
My first stop around 11:00 am was made to the City Hall Stage to listen to a presentation, A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words. There I learned about Laurie Shock’s book “How to Publish Your Own Photography Book.” She’s the president of Shock Design Books, an independent publishing house in Atlanta that specializes in finely crafted books covering a range of genres with an emphasis on art and photography books. You can read more about this on this link.
To the right is pictured Architect Richard Diedrich’s book “Legendary Golf Clubhouses of the U.S. and Great Britain.” The designer and publisher for his book was Laurie Shock. The topic of conversation was about what it takes to publish a photography book.
A sign on the sidewalk that read “Free poems On Demand” caught my attention. The topic I chose for the poem the gentleman at the typewriter agreed to write was, the horse in the pasture. And why did I ask him to write about this topic? Because I had written a short memory story on the subject and thought a poem would be nice. Here’s a link to my posting on The Horse In The Pasture.
Fifteen minutes later, Jon Ciliberto had written this poem:
“When science captured in silver flowing animals, then discovery of the floating aspect of a running horse, and propulsion became flight. Each dirt clod flies from shod leg, skipping grass and hot air over from easy canter. Nay, a fence isn’t a corral on space, neither is human fixing of purpose and a finish line. Drop the flag on broken earth, each droplet of equine equanimity whisks a lazy tail on history’s fierce placement of a single creature in a single place.”
A statue by George Lundeen of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and “author of the Declaration of Independence,” can be found in front of the Old Courthouse on the Square in Decatur, Georgia.
The High Museum of Art Atlanta had a booth at the festival this year. When I inquired about their current exhibit they gave me a fan. It has a picture of the “Girl with a Pearl Earring“ on it. This Vermeer painting is now on view through September 29, 2013 along with thirty-five Dutch Golden Age masterpieces, Rembrandt and more at the museum.
The end of August is always hot and today was not an exception. The afternoon temperature on Saturday reached a high of 90 degrees, so the fan with the picture of the Girl with a Pearl Earring helped keep me cool from the rising temperatures.
These are a few of the things I saw at the book festival this year where there were more than 300 national and local authors attending.
Written and Photographed by Mary Gilmartin, September 1, 2013
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