Quick notes from the Literary Stage at the 2014 San Mateo County Fair

Two weeks have passed since the San Mateo County Fair ended on June 14 and I’m still coming down from the high. I didn’t ride the Ferris wheel or even consider the tower that drops you free-fall and screaming from a hundred feet up in the air.

I went for the tamer side of things: the Literary Stage and Fine Arts Galleria. Over fifty events took place on the stage this year—a bigger stage, with comfortable audience seating and live music in the evenings.

Here are a few quick notes from a week of fun!

Poets entertain

Thanks to Caroline Goodwin, Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, for bringing six fellow poet laureates to the stage. How gifted they are. Budget cuts have curtailed the arts in the public schools, but municipal government still cares—each poet was named to his or her post by a local city or county. Washington, D.C. could use a daily infusion of the same poetic intelligence.

Directors take a break and sit down

Highlight of the week for me was interviewing the Fine Arts Galleria and Literary Directors, husband and wife team Boris and Bardi Koodrin. How does their marriage survive the annual intensity of the Fair? How does Boris handle “bad art” submitted for display in the Galleria? What visions are taking shape in their minds for the rest of the decade? They answered these questions with humor, honesty, and passion. The video interview will be posted on the California Writers Club website soon.

Women writers celebrate

There was much more. I know people who drove for over an hour and who even sailed from a port down the coast to attend the panel of women writers celebrating the 1960s and ‘70s. A deep conviction for social justice and women’s rights, born in the consciousness shift of that era, was evident in the panelists’ voices, in person and in the Times They Were A-Changing anthology.

Playwrights deliver

Hosting three short plays at the Fair is my annual privilege. Playwrights Ollie Mae Welch, David Hirzel, and Teresa LeYung Ryan wrote, respectively, about the existence of God, survival under extreme conditions, and loss. This awesome trio has presented new work for three years running.

Workshops bring surprises

I taught a workshop to help people navigate the writer’s inner journey. I was thrilled when a participant said that one of the exercises shifted her self-perception and gave her a clarity she’d been longing to discover.

There were other workshops, too, on creativity and marketing and more. There were book launches, readings, and activities for kids. Thirty authors signing and selling books. A party for Carry the Light contest winners.

Editors from The Stoneslide Corrective were on hand to give instant rejection letters to any writer willing to take the risk. The rejections were so disdainful they made you laugh as you cringed. (Try the Rejection Generator online. It’s good practice for the real thing.)

The Fair wakes up the senses 

Away from the Literary Stage, you were immersed in a sensory mix of colored lights, smoky barbeque grills, cold beer, and sticky fingers. Fragments of sound. Tattoos and petting zoos. Indoors, an uncaged yet captive owl confronted visitors with its powerful gaze. Memories filed themselves in the imagination. Stories began to form.

 

 

Join your fellow writers next year

Writers and artists left the Fair with new friends and a stronger bond with the arts community. If you missed this year, join us next June. You can skip the rides and go for tame, or bring your wild writer onto the stage.

You can be a presenter. Read, teach, sing—give your literary talents a public voice.

Think about it. The Literary Stage is open to all writers.

Please feel free to comment below about your experience at the Fair.

 

 

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© 2014 Darlene Frank. All rights reserved.

Darlene Frank is a writer, editor and creativity coach who helps writers gain creative confidence and fulfill their artistic vision and dreams. She works with nonfiction authors especially in the self-help and memoir genres and with writers who have undergone a radical life transformation and want to create art from that experience. Her creative nonfiction is published in literary anthologies. Please contact her if you wish to republish this article in any form.