I can safely say I wasn’t expecting the St. Louis BookFest.

I first heard of the festival on Thursday evening, less than forty-eight hours before the event itself. The website provided a helpful list of featured authors, none of whom I had heard of. I had never even been to the Central West End before.

When I biked up to the Schlafly branch of the St. Louis Public Library on Saturday morning, I was afraid my worst fears would be confirmed—the BookFest didn’t actually exist. A helpful librarian directed me to a small meeting room at the back of the library, where about ten people milled around. Was this the festival? Had I just biked that far for nothing?

Spoiler alert: I hadn’t.

The first panel, “Windows & Mirrors: Seeing Yourself & Others in Middle-Grade Fiction” with authors Alex Gino and Antony John, didn’t fill half of the seats in the room. Despite the small size, or maybe because of it, the panel felt like a conversation. The audience of mainly middle schoolers asked insightful questions about representation, and before I knew it the hour was up. In the twists and turns of the conversation, I noticed a repeated theme.

“Books get purchased because they’re mirrors,” Gino, award-winning author of “George” and “You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P,” said. “Books get purchased because someone feels that they connected with it.”

John, whose latest book “Mascot” hit shelves in 2018, added, “That’s why it’s so important that there are books…Books can fill a niche that are irreplaceable. We owe it to kids to be able to see the world in all of its splendor and all of its problems.”

After a quick lunch in Forest Park, I returned to the small room at the back of the library. This time there were a few more people—maybe 40 in total.

The next panel, “Seriously YA: Tackling Vital Topics in Young Adult Fiction” with authors Ellen Hopkins, Brandy Colbert and NoNieqa Ramos, hit on many of the same ideas as the first. While the middle-school focused panel focused on disability and transgender representation, this one moved on to racial diversity and moral complexity.

As a writer, Hopkins, whose latest book “People Kill People” explores the seductive lure of violence, said that as a writer she can “offer perspective, show the possible outcomes of choices. Fiction is, I think, a safe space to present making better choices.”

Ramos and Colbert stressed the importance of representation.

“Everyone wants to see themselves in a book,” Colbert said.

Ramos continued. “You don’t need to have ‘the one book.’ You need to have the ten books.”

After the panel ended, I made my way up to McPherson Street, where I was told the main festival was located. Two blocks of the street had been closed. Vendors and literary groups set up tables and a live band played in the background.

I milled around, window-shopping down the street and actually shopping at Left Bank Books, one of the founders of the festival. Stuffing my three new books into my small backpack, I left the store just before the next panel started.

That panel, “Alternate Realities: Re-Imagining the Past and Future” with authors Wayetu Moore, Bethany Morrow and Marcia Douglas, also focused on racial representation.

Moore said that following the success of 2018’s “Black Panther,” publishers are looking for a specific type of narrative about African-Americans. Often, this means a story set in Africa.
Morrow (and every author whose panel I attended today) agreed that writing something with which they have experience is crucial. “I’m American!” she added, laughing.

Panels continued until 9 p.m., but I hopped back on my bike and headed back to campus. Overall, the day had been a success. I felt more informed, I’d had a good time and I’d purchased several books to add to my ever-growing collection.

Now, I’m from South Carolina; I live an hour and a half from Charleston, S.C., home to YALLFest, the largest young adult book festival in the country. Thousands of people travel to the city every year for the event. St. Louis Bookfest was nothing like YALLFest and I’m glad.

Thousands of people mean authors who are household names, but it also means that festival-goers regularly wait for several hours to speak with their favorite author (I personally waited for over three hours to have a single book signed last year). St. Louis Bookfest is small and accessible, creating an atmosphere that’s much more like a casual conversation between the authors and the audience.

This was only the second year of the festival. Now that I know about it, I am looking forward to next year’s event. I encourage all of you to go as well. Talking with successful published authors is not only important for people like me, who would like to publish a novel one day, but for everyone. Our literature reflects and shapes our world. We should connect with it.