Wordsmiths’ wingding

LITTLE ROCK — Here’s a multiple-choice question that any Arkansas book-lover should know.

Which of the following big to-do’s was attended by Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor, two-time-Oprah’s Book Club author Kaye Gibbons, Southern humorist and radio personality Roy Blount, presidential candidate and former NATO commander Wesley Clark, and actress and director Joey Lauren Adams:

a) the first-ever Arkansas Literary Festival in 2004

b) the most recent Arkansas Literary Festival

c) the Texas Book Festival in Austin

d) a deck party at High Profile editor Rachel O’Neal Chaney’s place, no big whoop.

Given this slate of marquee candidates, a smart guesser would immediately lock onto “b” or “c,” but they’d be wrong. (So, too, would be the Rachel fan, though her back deck is delightful in spring.) Keillor, Clark and those other luminaries were at the very first Arkansas Literary Festival, staged in 2004 by the Arkansas Literacy Councils.

It’s true that the guest list hasn’t noticeably improved - the 2011 headliner is humorist performer David Sedaris, and the best-selling authors Charlaine Harris of Magnolia and Ree Drummond of The ioneerWoman.com blog fame.

But Central Arkansas Library System Director Bobby Roberts and festival coordinator Brad Mooy expect upward of 9,000 guests at the seven-day festival that opens Thursday. That’s well north of three times the number it drew just three years ago, the last time the literacy councils organized it.

Since its inception, the Arkansas Literary Festival has managed to do a couple of things very well: not clog up downtown with a bunch of what by all appearances are out-of-towners but are actually people from Cabot, and not dazzle with one super-fabulous author and let the rest of the fest fizzle.

The festival has also managed to stay mostly free of charge, as well as easy to navigate and experience at your own pace.

The only events and sessions that carry a ticket price are An Evening With David Sedaris on April 13 ($40-$50), the festival authors soiree Friday ($25 in advance, $40 at the door), and the Saturday workshops Cooking With Vikings and Baked (both $15).Tickets for those events can be bought at any Central Arkansas Library location, or by calling (501) 918-3009.

A complete festival lineup, itinerary and map are available at Arkansas Literary Festival.org.

FIRST FEST OF SPRING

The big book festival is undoubtedly the most erudite, least Dionysian of the spring jamborees. What follows - Toad Suck Daze in Conway (Apr. 29-May 1), Riverfest in Little Rock and North Little Rock (Memorial Day weekend), the Little Rock Film Festival and the Wakarusa Music Festival near Ozark (both the first week of June), and the Art of Wine in Fayetteville (June 10-11) - have none of the finer sense and sensibility, not to mention far more madding crowds.

Why?

That’s easy. Arkansans are a music-and-movies-lovin’, quaffing and daffy kind of people too indelicate to grip the grace of a contemplative recreation.

Now wait just a minute!

“There are as many readers in Little Rock as there are, say, theatergoers and live music fans,” says Kevin Brockmeier, the capital city’s favorite fantasy writer. “The problem is that reading is a very private experience, a communion between one mind and another. That might, in fact, be its single most essential feature, and it can be difficult - transporting it from the private space into the public one.”

So, instead, consider the festival this way - a proper fete for the finest scribes. An honorarium for a group of supremely noble and chiefly brilliant dreamweavers who, unlike magazine pinups or nuptial princes, aren’t subject to ceaseless sycophantic adulation like they wish to be.

“It can be a lonely business,” says Phillip McMath, who’s receiving the $2,000 Booker Worthen Prize on Friday evening for his novel, The Broken Vase. His play, The Hanging of David O. Dodd, recently completed a successful three-week run at The Weekend Theater.

“You don’t know what they [the readers] think. It can be validating,” McMath said.

Fayetteville’s William Harrison, co-founder of the University of Arkansas Master of Fine Arts Programs in Creative Writing and author of the screenplay Rollerball, is this year’s winner of the $2,000 Porter Prize, also to be presented Friday.

COMPETITION FOR EYES

The festival, Mooy is fond of saying, is the biggest of its kind between Nashville (Southern Festival of Books)and Austin (Texas Book Festival). But for most everyone involved - authors, staff - it’s a labor of love.

The event’s $155,000 budget is a fraction of other statewide events. The Arkansas State Fair, for instance, spends more than $200,000 just in advertising.

Producing this thing “is a matter of logistics ... volunteers ... [financial] supporters,” Mooy says. “We’re still in a growth pattern. Much of that is a function of how much resources we can put into it.”

Brockmeier would really like to see some authors of international acclaim - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, Javier Marias - flown in. But writers of their renown command stipends.Nearly all of the authors at this year’s festival have been compensated only for their travel expenses, and that’s not unusual.

“I’ve done a few festivals and ‘cons’ since Brains came out and typically I’ll get travel and hotel expenses - and in one case food! - but no stipend,” says Conway author Robin Becker. “For New York Comic Con, I didn’t get anything. But my publisher paid because it’s such a huge event.”

This year, Harper’s and Rolling Stone contributing editor Jeff Sharlet backed out after discovering he was double booked - his other obligation is a paid appearance, so no contest. Mooy calls it“profoundly disappointing” considering the festival extended unusual patience with this particular author before he committed, but it’s not uncommon.

Other events compete for writers’ attention, too. Last year, the festival was scheduled on the same weekend as the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference. That overlap cost it a half-dozen authors.

That Becker’s publisher, Harper Collins, paid her to attend a festival was standard convention at one time. Not any more.

“I’ve been told the publishing industry was much more flush five years ago,” Mooy says.

And that’s the one thing they probably don’t want to put in writing.

FESTIVAL AT A GLANCE WHAT: Eighth annual Arkansas Literary Festival: Author readings, panel discussions and workshops WHEN: Thursday-April 13, with most sessions Saturday and Sunday WHERE: Nearly all sessions and events at or near the Main Library at Rock Street and President Clinton Avenue in Little Rock WHY: Why? Why, a literary festival further promulgates the Central Arkansas Library System’s mission of expanding literacy and nurturing interest in the arts, culture and science.

HOW: This year’s festival budget is $155,000. The funding comes from the library budget and event sponsors such as the Arkansas Humanities Council.

HOW MUCH TO YOU: Admission is free to most events. Sessions requiring an admission fee include An Evening With David Sedaris, the festival authors soiree Author! Author!, and the cooking workshops Cooking With Vikings and Baked.

MORE: Information including times and locations of all events can be found online at arkansasliteraryfestival.org or at any CALS branch. For tickets to paid sessions, call (501) 918-3009.