Baton Rouge brings two hundred authors together around reading

The Louisiana Book Festival brought more than two hundred authors and presenters to downtown Baton Rouge on 31 October, across the State Library and Capitol Park. The free programme covered over twenty genres, from Southern fiction and crime to science fiction and children’s books. The National Book Foundation presented a conversation on satire with Ben Fountain and T. Geronimo Johnson, while Farrah Rochon received the Louisiana Writer Award. For the fiftieth anniversary of Interview with the Vampire, a shared festival discussion returned attention to Anne Rice’s novel and its relationship with the city. The scale of the day demonstrates the public role of a state library: not only preserving books, but creating community among writers, readers and different storytelling traditions.