First Possumtown Book Fest held at Columbus Arts Council
Local authors, all ages book fair, and an assortment of panels crown the inaugural Possumtown Book Fest
COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Friendly City Books hosted the inaugural Possumtown Book Fest at the Columbus Arts Council.
Rachel Derise, the manager of Friendly City Books, described the wide array of things
to do at the event.
“So we have author panelists in the upstairs theater going all day,” Derise said. “So a panel every hour here on the ground floor this morning, we had a local author showcase. And now we are currently
transitioning to make the entire space a sort of scholastic book fair vibe. We have books for all ages. We have a kids-specific section. We have Mississippi authors. We have genre sections. We have made backboards like you would make for your school Science Fair for some of the genre, we leaned in hard to fun quirky nostalgia.”
Ally Burguieres, New Orleans-based author and owner of Sesame the Opossum Rescue shared her excitement about the book fest.
“I saw they were doing this book festival and I was like, I have to be there,” Burguieres. “I want to come back to Possum Town because we are actually based in New Orleans. Yeah, but we love it here. The turnout has been amazing. We’ve had a lot of kids, a lot of families, and people who are shopping, which is really fun because it supports all the local authors and it supports for me, all of our merch sales and book sales support the possum rescue that I do. So it’s been great.”
An attendee, Rosy Davis, said the Possumtown Book Fest was something they looked forward to.
“So I have a soft spot for the adult book fair just because it brings me back to the scholastic book Fair Times,” Davis said. “There’s been a lot of great people and everybody is really friendly and happy to be here. So it’s been awesome. We have to do it every year and next time even more people should come out.”
The Possumtown Book Fest is supported by Friendly City Books Community Connection, a special project of the CREATE Foundation, as well as the Mississippi Humanities Council and the Mississippi Book Festival.
