Local authors, all-ages book fair and a selection of panels crown the inaugural Possumtown Book Fest

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Friendly City Books hosted the first Possumtown Book Fest at the Columbus Arts Council.

Rachel Derise, manager of Friendly City Books, described the wide range of items
to do at the event.

“So we have author panelists in the upstairs theater that go all day,” Derise said. “So a panel every hour here on the ground floor this morning, we had a local author showcase. And now we’re right now
devolves into making the entire space a sort of scholastic book fair feel. We have books for all ages. We have a child-specific department. We have Mississippi writers. We have genre sections. We’ve done backboards like you’d do for your school science fair for some of the genre, we leaned hard to fun quirky nostalgia.”

Ally Burguieres, New Orleans-based author and owner of Sesame the Opossum Rescue shared her excitement about the book party.

“I saw they were doing this book festival and I thought I have to be there,” Burguieres. “I want to come back to Possum Town because we’re actually based in New Orleans. Yeah, but we love it here. The turnout has been great. We’ve had a lot of kids, a lot of families and people shopping, which is really fun because it supports all the local authors and it supports for me, all of our merchandise sales and book sales support the possum rescue that I do. So it’s been great.”

One attendee, Rosy Davis, said the Possumtown Book Fest was something they looked forward to.

“So I have a soft spot for the adult book fair just because it brings me back to the scholastic Book Fair Times,” Davis said. “There’s been a lot of great people and everyone’s really friendly and happy to be here. So it’s been awesome. We have to do it every year and next time even more should come out.”

Possumtown Book Fest is supported by the Friendly City Books Community Connection, a special project of the CREATE Foundation, as well as the Mississippi Humanities Council and the Mississippi Book Festival.

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