Tucson Festival of Books

By Johnny D. Boggs

I have been swamped with deadlines, assignments and shoveling snow. But here’s some great news:

March 4-5 is just around the corner.

Because that weekend, I’ll be at the Tucson Festival of Books. For a writer, or a reader, there is no better place to be.

If you haven’t been to Tucson for this festival, you are missing something special.

I was invited to speak on a panel with the great Jane Candia Coleman at the inaugural event in 2009. Remember …? The economic downturn, the longest since World War II. I wondered who would show up to listen to authors or buy books.

Who turned up? Well, 50,000 book lovers and 450 authors/presenters. And an amazing 800 volunteers.

I haven’t missed one since. Nor have many attendees.

The festival has drawn more than 100,000 in subsequent years. Last year, the first since the COVID shutdown (canceled in 2020, virtual in 2021), concern about who would return faded fast. The event, always free to the public and held on the University of Arizona campus, was packed again. Maybe not the record 140,000 of 2019, but those two days were awesome.

Generally, I help staff a booth for Western Writers of America, but sneak away to catch a panel or two if I can. Most years I either moderate or speak on a panel. This year, I’m doing both.

Talk about exciting. I share a Saturday panel about film history books, “Lights! Camera! America!,” with Kirk Ellis and Alan K. Rode (moderated by film scholar Andrew Patrick Nelson) and on Sunday I moderate “Visions of the West” with Kathryn Wilder, Emma Zimmerman and Pulitzer Prize finalist Ted Conover.

But the real treat is talking to nonwriters, wannabe writers, colleagues, friends and literary icons about writing, process, books, literature. I can’t wait to pick Ted Conover’s brain.

Hey, I spend most days and nights alone in an office writing, rewriting, rewriting, rewriting and sweating. Then wondering is anyone really going to read that? Does anybody still read?

Well, the Tucson Festival of Books is a morale booster for any writer. Oh, sure, most of those 100,000 attendees probably won’t have much interest in what I write. But they are proof that people are still interested in literature.

I’ll drive home March 5 excited, ready to step back inside that office for another lonely year. The adrenaline from Tucson will keep me going till 2024.

Hope to you there.