Inaugural Missouri Book Festival brings Show-Me State authors to Washington
Missouri writers turn phrases with much the same wild strength as the Missouri River bends.
The state's literary personality will be celebrated later this month at the first Missouri Book Festival, held in Washington Aug. 25-27. With a varied lineup of Missouri authors and full slate of events, the festival promises to dig deep into what makes Missouri's literature unique.
The festival will feature some mid-Missourians among its roster and, according to a page on its website, drew help from Unbound Book Festival, University of Missouri Press and Daniel Boone Regional Library representatives in prepping this year's event.
Here are just a handful of authors worth looking out for.
Locals to catch
In his day job, Gary Kremer guides the State Historical Society of Missouri; as an author, his work has stretched across time to examine the experiences of Black Missourians, the lives of George Washington Carver and James Milton Turner and, in last year's "The Place of Promise," the way the state looks on the other side of its bicentennial.
University of Missouri graduate Porcshe Moran Murphy owns numerous other ties to mid-Missouri, including career stops in Columbia, Jefferson City and California. She will appear at the festival along with chef Matthew Unger, with whom she collaborated on the forthcoming "Missouri Comfort: Recipes and Stories from Favorite Places."
With books such as the superlative story collection "Scattered Lights" and the historical novel "The Language of Trees," Columbia author Steve Wiegenstein consistently creates curious characters who look, act and talk more like us than is comfortable. Wiegenstein understands the Midwest and Midwesterners as well as any author, and his lived-in looks in the mirror entertain and disrupt in quiet, powerful ways.
Other Missouri writers of note
Nancy Allen holds court, co-writing legal thrillers with bestselling author James Patterson ("The Jailhouse Lawyer," "Juror #3") and penning her own mysteries. The former Missouri Assistant Attorney General's latest is "Renegade," follows a disgraced assistant district attorney who falls in with a ragtag band of justice-seekers.
Earning the label "storyteller" several times over, Angela Elam has experience in playwriting and literary magazines. Elam is best known to Missouri audiences for guiding the public-radio show "New Letters on the Air" on KCUR in Kansas City. The program "features intimate conversations with contemporary writers who reveal secrets about their creative methods, read a few favorite passages, and inspire the listener's imagination," the KCUR website notes.
A writer and zookeeper, Carolyn Mueller-Kelly has written children's books about Cardinals legend Dizzy Dean and the Joplin tornado, as well as historically-minded volumes about Forest Park and other physical and historical landmarks of St. Louis. Her work with animals taught her to see "the idiosyncrasies of each individual and species," her website notes.
Missouri's current Poet Laureate, Independence's Maryfrances Wagner has devoted her life to cultivating great writing, whether originating in her own spirit — manifest in a deep catalog of books and journal publications — or with other authors. In a 2021 KCUR interview, Wagner shared her rules for writers. Among them, "Be true to the spirit of the poem."
"The way the writer feels about the subject he’s writing about should be true," Wagner said. "... If the poem is strong enough, it won’t let you write a lie. It’ll take over. But for the sake of the poem, the poet can change the details to make the poem stronger and more interesting."
Learn more about the festival, and find a full event schedule, at https://missouribookfestival.com/.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. Find him on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Local authors among lineup of Missouri Book Festival in Washington
