About that Book Festival...

Last Saturday, the first of November, we Delaware authors found out where we stand. We are the red-headed stepchildren of our state.

The Delaware Book Festival and Delaware Authors Day were supposed to be a combined event. Or so we were led to believe. But the Delaware Division of Libraries co-opted the event. They did not link to our page on the Delaware Heritage Commission website (although the DHC linked to the Book Festival site), gave Delaware authors no publicity, no acknowledgment. We were personae non gratae.

We Delaware authors didn't meet their standards of what authors were, I suppose. While the book festival sprawled across the Legislative Mall and the Green with the Division of Libraries' authors in pavilion tents, we authors, whose only sin was that we lived within the state, were shuffled off to a corner room in the nearby Delaware Public Archives building. They provided no signs to let anyone know we were there, we were not included in any of their information, and I wonder if anyone over there realized we were even there -- or did they just conveniently forget? Few found their way to us.

By way of example, my husband bought lunch for me, and after wandering around the grounds asking one helper after another where the Delaware authors were, and getting "Who? I don't know. I don't see anything about them listed..." repeatedly, he finally found his way to me. It took a half hour; lunch wasn't the only thing cold by then.

It's good to know that our state is so ashamed of us.