EBENSBURG, Pa. – Almost 60 authors and many avid readers came together to celebrate the written word during the Festival of Books in the Alleghenies Saturday.
There were readings, conversations and plenty of books for sale during the gathering at Ebensburg’s Veterans Park of Cambria County.
“Oh my goodness, it’s amazing,” Hilary Hauck, author and event committee chairwoman, said. “Every person here has something in common, which is love of books. You see people coming and they’re so passionate about books. It’s just such a joy to meet people because usually we’re working on our own in an office.”
The event raised money for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library which provides free books to children from birth until age five. “They put books directly in the hands of kids,” Hauck said. “A kid with a book in his hands, they’re going to have more success. It’s really a good cause.”
The group of authors included Jennifer Haigh, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
Haigh grew up in what was then called Barnesboro, which is now part of Northern Cambria, and attended Bishop Carroll High School.
“Coming back here, it’s something I do anyway because my family is still living here,” Haigh, a Boston resident, said. “This place always feels like home to me on some level.
“For me, as a writer, it’s particularly important, because so much of my work is set in this part of Pennsylvania. Three of my books – the novel ‘Baker Towers,’ the novel ‘Heat and Light’ and the story collection ‘News from Heaven’ – are all set in the same town, and this is a town I call Bakerton. It’s really a composite of many different former coal mining towns in the northern part of Cambria County. The readers in this part of the world, I think, have a deeper understanding of these stories than readers anywhere because it’s home, and they recognize it.”
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