Storm troopers marched by a reading area as Jedi in training learned how to use lightsabers. Iron Man sat behind a shelf of books with other superheroes making capes. Zombies attacked anyone who attempted to make it to the top of the five-story building in a game of survival.
These characters and others took over the Central Arkansas Library System’s Main Library in Little Rock on Saturday as part of the four-day Arkansas Literary Festival that concludes today.
“The beauty of the literary festival is the diversity of topics we have,” said Susan Gele, assistant director of public relations with the library system. “It’s a great way to sample other reading genres … Sometimes it sounds like a scholarly type event, but we really try to emphasize thefun in reading.”
In celebration of the festival’s 10th year, event planners hosted dress-up and interactive sessions for the first time, she said.
Lisa Marie Anderson took along her whole family.
Clothed in a QiPao - the traditional Chinese-style dress - the mother of three explained how her teenage daughter is an anime fan who wanted to attend the ComiCALS portion of the festival, which featured a “cosplay” competition - where fans dress as their favorite characters - a video game tournament, anime screening, drawing and light-saber classes, the zombie survival game and author panels.
Anderson’s youngest, Faery, 2, fiddled with the makings of her QiPao dress in a chair while 6-year-old Gavin, dressed as Captain America, urged his mother to look at another boy wearing an Iron Man mask.
“This is something for free for me and my family to do. I’m a single mom, so free is good,” Anderson said of the festival. “It’s something for all ages. I have a 17-year-old, 6-year-old and 2-year-old, so you can’t go many places for all ages nowadays.”
While the younger children decorated masks and made their own capes out of cut-up T-shirts at the superhero activity station on the third floor, Haley, the 17-year-old, ventured to the fourth floor. Stepping off the elevator, a boy with black lightning-bolt tattoos coming down from his eyes like tears met people with an evil stare and grunt.
Nearby, an attendee was dressed like Toad, the Super Mario Brothers character with the toadstool head. Others, like Haley and her friend Sarah Bobo, also 17, were dressed like their favorite anime characters.
Jonathan Nichols, the library system’s team programmer and head of the ComiCALS portion of the festival, explained the draw of dressing up as a way to interact with novels.
“It’s a vehicle to express your fandom,” he said. “It pulls people into things you may not have known you were interested in. You may find your new nerd love here.”
He said event planners tried to “cram as much nerdiness into one event as possible.”
In an earlier session Saturday, a group of graphic novel and youth book authors hosted a speed session about their books.
Louisiana native John Whaley, 29, told an audience of about 30 that as he set out to write a nonfiction novel about the reappearance of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Brinkley, Ark., his book took another turn.
“Once I started researching, I realized that I really like making stuff up. I’m really good at lying,” he said. “When I heard that story about Brinkley, something sort of just struck me. Of all things, I never thought I would write about an extinct species of woodpecker.”
Sam Calvin Brown, 27, from Benton, read from his book about a 6-year-old girl from central Arkansas learning that her father is a methamphetamine dealer. GB Tran, 36, from South Carolina, showed his graphic noveldepicting his parents’ survival during the Vietnam War.
Dusty Higgins, 32, and Ron Wolfe, 67, both employees of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, showed their graphic novel about zombies in Camelot. Higgins also talked about a series he illustrated, Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer. And Heather Sutherlin, 34, of North Little Rock told about her dream-inspired series.
“All of my stories started as a dream,” she said. “I have these fabulous dreams like movies … I just wrote down what I saw. I wrote to read the end of the story. I write as a reader. I’ve found myself arguing with characters.”
With more than 70 presenters and dozens of sessions over four days, Gele expects about 9,000 people to participate in this year’s festival, she said.
The remaining events for today are “Drafting the Biography,” an author session at 1:30 p.m. at the Main Library downtown; “Finale,” a panel discussion with the authors of Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Magnificence at 3:30 p.m. at the Main Library.; and “Veterans Write Their Lives,” at 1:30 p.m. at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History at 503 E. 9th St. in Little Rock.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 18 on 04/21/2013