Festival of Books connects with Sisters

Sisters Festival of Books (SFOB) presented its second festival last weekend and celebrated its new status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Authors, poets, and publishers from around the region and beyond shared stories, food, readings, and workshops with an enthusiastic audience.

Born and raised in Sisters, Dr. Kelly Davis Martin was delighted with the successful fest. "It's awesome! It's so good just being in community with other people who are interested in writing and books and shared ideas," she said.

Photo by T. Lee Brown

A packed house listened intently to poet Chris Vega, originally from the borderlands of Texas and Mexico, who came to Sisters via Tacoma, Washington.

The weekend kicked off with a workshop on "notions of wealth and poverty," led by Chris Vega and tina ontiveros. Vega is a queer Chicana poet, single parent, and publisher of Blue Cactus Press. Born and raised in poverty in the Pacific Northwest, ontiveros writes award-winning work that explores class, poverty, addiction, and power.

Davis Martin, a writer who works in behavioral health, attended the workshop. "That alone got the creative juices flowing," she said.

The Belfry played host to a packed house for the StorySLAM on Friday night. Locals and guest authors took to the stage sharing music, stories, and poems. Beth Wood, Willy Vlautin, and other musicians told stories through song-mournful yet sometimes humorous stories of death and loss.

Vega picked up the theme, reading a complex poem set at a funeral. In a moving, intimate moment, festival founder Lane Jacobson told the crowd that it was his mother's birthday. She had taken her life years before.

"The community event at The Belfry, the short stories people shared, the music - it reminds me that we're so privileged here in Sisters to have this community, to have Lane building this community for us," said Davis Martin.

Photo by Cian Schultz

Anita Gail-Jones, author of "The Peach Seed," was one of the featured authors at Sisters Festival of Books.

The mood got rollicking when novelist Anita Gail Jones expertly led the audience on a journey through two very tall tales. Then local residents joined a competition, sharing stories from their own lives, with subjects ranging from border crossings to extreme "X Files" fandom.

The winning local storyteller was Cinda Johnson, whose experience as a clown took a dark but beautiful turn when she was hired to attend a child's deathbed.

Sisters resident Brenda Smith found the event "amazingly different and fun. We need to do this a lot more."

Author readings, interviews, and signings filled Sisters Movie House & Café throughout the day on Saturday. Then came a sumptuous feast of a multitude of courses, each concocted specifically for an attending author, based on themes and foods in their books. Diners sat at tables within Paulina Springs Books, chatting with each other and the authors.

Among other delights, Chef Jackson Higdon and the team at Luckey's Woodsman served a soup presented in a tin can, cold-smoked watermelon salad, elk with garlic mashed potatoes, and mac and cheese with rainbow chanterelles.

Sunday featured a local author and small press faire, free to the public, extending from the bookstore and into Toriizaka Art gallery next door, along with workshops.

"It's beautiful," said Davis Martin, who attended most of the events. She especially appreciated having the experience at home, rather than traveling to a larger city for a literary gathering.

Inaugurated in 2019, the first Sisters Festival of Books took place at Sisters Middle School; Davis Martin was in attendance. After a long Covid hiatus, SFOB returned this year. In classic old-school folk or quilt festival fashion, this time events took place in different spots around Sisters. "At Space in Common, Paulina, the movie house, Toriizaka gallery: having it in these spaces has been really nice," she said.

Portland-based author and publisher Laura Stanfill said, "This is a fabulous festival and I feel so lucky to have been invited. I've loved engaging with readers and being in conversation with so many people who cherish the written word."

The slate of presenters included people of various ages, genders, and races, working in genres from poetry to collage, literary fiction to memoir, historical fiction to romance mysteries. The authors and presenters, Davis Martin believes, helped audiences "open our minds and our hearts."

"We live in a pretty homogeneous area here in Sisters, so to have people coming from different places, different backgrounds.... We get this gift of new voices," she said.

"A fair amount of our local speakers are bringing a sometimes more conservative, an outdoor or cowboy perspective..." Davis Martin continued. "There's kind of a flavor of creativity that Sisters feels like." Authors and attendees from urban areas and college towns came together with a small-town, semi-rural, largely white population, bringing possibilities for connection and perspective.

"People coming into our festival, this can be a medium-especially in today's time-for us to connect, when a lot of times there's a lot of division," noted Davis Martin. "In this space of creativity of music, photography, art, writing, reading and community, we can create kinship."