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Festival of Books

Oct 11, 2011

Writers and readers share a universal bond, and therein lies the ever-growing success of the South Dakota Book Festival, which was held this past weekend in the historic havens of downtown Deadwood. There were standing-room-only crowds for most of the presentations, which ranged from New Yorker cartooning to Auschwitz, six-man football in South Dakota and the Rapid City flood. The festival, in its nine-year history, has quickly emerged as one of the best such gatherings in the country. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.

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It was a rainy weekend in Deadwood, but the weather only added to the mood of the book festival.
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Attendees rushed, umbrellas in hand, between the town's casinos, library, hotels and other historic places that hosted events.
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Rapid City's Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve is one of South Dakota's most prolific authors. Her first book was published in 1972, and despite a teaching career, she has since written 26 books, plus many short stories and poems. A member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, she has provided a Lakota perspective to regional literature.
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John Dufresne spoke to a large crowd in the Emerald Room of the Franklin Hotel on how to write a novel in six months. But he prefaced his remarks by acknowledging that he is himself about a year behind on the deadline for his current book.
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Well-known New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss filled the Masonic Temple with laughter as he showed dozens of his favorite funnies. Bliss, who lives in northern Vermont, expressed a great appreciation for rural South Dakota and noted that he is planning a visit to the Pine Ridge Reservation in February.
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Old-timers enjoy the historical sessions at the book festival, but the agenda has something for everyone — fiction, non-fiction, children's literature, art, poetry, how-to-write and numerous other subjects.
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Writers and presenters arrive from across the USA, but regional talent is also represented. Allison Hedge Cook, a widely respected South Dakota poet, has become a popular speaker at the festival through the years.
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Christine Stewart-Nunez teaches English at South Dakota State University in Brookings and has authored several books including The Love of Unreal Things. No one has ever dozed at her poetry readings. She writes and speaks directly to the heart and soul of life's most tender and traumatic times.
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Patrick Hicks captivated his audience with poems about adopting a Korean baby. The Augustana College prof and poet read a poem about the boy's first night in America, and then he followed with a poet that envisions the same little fellow's last day — hopefully 80 or 90 years from now — when he might be in a hospital room, hooked to machines and surrounded by the love of his American family.