Homegrown Authors! KaBooM at the Lexington Farmer's Market: photo by Susan C. Brown
This past Saturday members of KaBooM were at Lexington’s Downtown Farmer’s Market at a booth cosponsored by the Morris Book Shop and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning called “Homegrown Authors.” The event turned out to be one of the most successful sales days ever for our group; you might want to check out the Morris Book Shop site for details on more selected Saturdays this summer when you can meet area authors and buy signed copies of their books.
But as Jan said in her immediate previous post, these days are not only about selling the book. Continuing her theme, I’d like to reflect on what I learned from our time at the book table on Saturday: many of the folks we met at the Farmer’s Market are hungry not only for fresh, locally grown produce.
They are hungry for good writing.
We set up the sewing frame to let people know that the object we were selling was hand-sewn, and a number stopped to have conversations about book binding and the beauty of hand crafts.
Sewing Frame entices passersby to see hand sewn signatures: photo by Susan C. Brown
But an even larger number of passersby were fascinated by the content of When the Bough Breaks. One person who read through the table of contents was completely stopped by the title of Lynn’s short story. “Heartichoke!” she called out: “Oh, isn’t that just perfect, that’s exactly what it’s like!” She bought three copies.
A retired English teacher stopped to tell us of his frustration that high school students are not guaranteed opportunities to do their own writing in English classes. We showed him the structure of our book: the brief essays after each entry that reflect on the creative process and the role the group plays in our continually developing craft; followed by individual writing prompts—“Try this”—to encourage written responses. At that, he was sold, too.
And a number of folks were simply pleased as punch that this joint venture meant they could buy literature with their produce: “that’s fantastic,” they said.
We couldn’t agree more.
