Three years ago, I launched the first Northwest Author Series in conjunction with The Wilsonville Library, The Friends of the Wilsonville Library and The Wilsonville Arts and Culture Council.
We have door prizes from Writer’s Digest Books, coffee from Starbucks, cookies from Lamb’s Thriftway, and wonderful authors speaking right here in my home town from all over the Pacific Northwest. I also select and work with a Wilsonville High School student intern so they can gain experience hosting and running a local literary event.
It’s a lot of work, of course. Gobs and gobs and hours and hours of work, not to mention the actual number of hours I spend at the event. And in a world of infinite choices for how I could spend my time, you might be wondering, why in the world would I choose to manage and host an author series, of all things?
I’m so glad you asked. Here are eight reasons:
To create educational contexts for writers. If you look more closely at what I do beyond writing, creating educational contexts that benefit writers is an aspect of my career that I am very passionate about. Creating contexts is very powerful. I appreciate the opportunity to have an outlet for this energy locally.
To expand my literary horizons. I write nonfiction. I read nonfiction. I spend a lot of time online reading blogs that are also a form of nonfiction. So hosting an author series with a variety of types of authors expands my creative horizons. It feeds my brain and is an important part of my continuing education.
To try the shoe on the other foot. I am an author. I am often the author who would like to be selected to be a speaker or presenter at a local event. Being the creator, manager, and host of my own event helps me understand what it takes to create great literary events from both sides of the experience. I have a lot more compassion for event organizers than I think most authors do. I’m also less tolerant of sub-par programming and sloppy program management. I am fairly demanding of my authors during the planning process because I like to put on a stellar event. If attendees are not coming up after each presentation thanking me, then I’m doing something wrong.
It’s nice to give something of myself back to the community. The author series showcases the professional world I work in for the people who live here in this town of about 18,000. There would not likely be an author series like this here if I wasn’t doing it. I feel good about bridging my my professional world with my everyday life and inviting members of the community in to experience what the life of an author is really like.
I genuinely enjoy connecting with other authors. At other events I attend in other places, I am likely to be one of many authors in attendance. But at my event, I get to meet, and chat with and support one author at a time. I enjoy this aspect of the job. I genuinely care about other authors and I’m happy to be able to provide a promotional opportunity for them and to help them connect with writers who are eager to learn from them.
The series has become a part of my professional identity. An award-winning author who has had ten books published just told me over the phone that what I do with the series is incredible. That feels good but the work is also rewarding in and of itself. I like having my name associated with a high-quality event.
A reminder that quality counts. I work hard on the series and take a lot of pride in it. I am always looking to have each year go a little better than the one before. Quality is an important part of what successful authors do.
I do it for the synergy. When you take a wonderful local space, like our local library, then team up with other great community organizations, and bring in top-notch talent, and ask them to push themselves to do a really good job, and invite the public via the media to come partake of the end result, what you are really doing is creating synergy. This kind of everybody-wins energy is something I wish every author could experience.
No matter if we have twenty attendees or sixty, there is an alchemy present at a successful event, and that synergy serves everyone involved and no one is diminished in the equation, despite how complicated the events are in the set up and execution. That’s win-win-win. And win-win-win ripples out into the universe and comes right back to you. You don’t have to track it to know that this is true.
Despite the large investment of my time and effort, the series has been a boon to my career and a boost to my self-esteem. The process gets a little easier every year as the series just gets better and better.
If you would like to learn more about how you too can create literary events in your community, I wrote an entire chapter on the topic in Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platofrm, which is available at bookstores and booksellers everywhere or you can order it from Amazon.com.
If you would like to learn more about the Northwest Author Series, you can visit our blog. If you are local, sign up there to receive our monthly event announcements.
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This sounds awesome, Christina. I love attending local literary events — they fit my budget and also allow me to meet fun, creative people in my own community.
Our library sponsored a “Big Read” event in March. We focused on To Kill a Mockingbird for a whole month, and there were special speakers and guests. It was great! Next year will be The Great Gatsby. I'm thankful for programs like these!