Zoom-Zoom: LitYoungstown’s Annual Fall Literary Festival Knocks It Out of the Park
Hosting a multi-day event is challenging in the best of times. Choosing a date that does not conflict with other community events...Announcing and promoting RFPs, gathering those proposals, and inviting speakers…Recruiting volunteers…Soliciting sponsorships…Marketing…Securing a venue…Building the schedule…Tracking registrations. Pile a pandemic onto that seemingly endless list and you have a huge, complicated, potentially calamitous gathering.
With those details (and challenges) fixed in my mind, I was delighted that LitYoungstown’s recent Fall Literary Festival was so successful.
This virtual gathering for more than 300 attendees and scores of participants (via Zoom or YouTube), featured outstanding, highly regarded speakers—from Author David Giffels to Poet Janet Wong and many others—as well as readings, workshops, and lectures. Throughout this event, the behind-the-scenes hard work was invisible, and that allowed me to luxuriate in a few stress-free days in the company of like-minded friends (and strangers).
It was wonderful to cozy into my favorite chair at home—cup of tea nearby—and hear from literary masters. I jotted notes and ideas while lounging (and learning) in my sweats. I slapped on a little makeup (getting “camera ready” during a time when social distancing and stay-at-home recommendations have allowed a certain slippage from typical routines) to read poetry during workshops.
If there were “glitches” during the Festival, I did not see them. And that’s kudos to LitYoungstown’s Co- Founder/Director Karen Schubert and the scores of people who pulled off a successful, intimate yet expansive, thought-provoking, fun event.
All of us hope that we can go “back to normal” sometime in 2021. It would be lovely to hug my friends and shake hands with new acquaintances at next year’s Festival. But if the world demands more social distancing, it’s great to know that LitYoungstown’s Annual Fall Literary Festival will bring us together in ways that are satisfying and enlightening. Well done, Karen & Co. And…thanks!
