It was a beautiful day to be a bibliophile in New Iberia.
Tables dotted the sidewalks along Main Street throughout downtown, covered in books, with authors and publishers alike hawking their wares to an appreciative public.
The first Dave Robicheaux Hometown Literary Festival: Celebrating Storytellers from Iberia and Beyond was running at full steam Saturday, with dozens of writers, fans and the merely curious on hand to help the inaugural festival become a success.
“We love walking through downtown on the weekends,” Joshua Cabak of New Iberia said as he and his wife, Erica, and daughter, Alyssa, spoke with poet Craig Collette. “There is always something going on here.”
“She wants to be a writer,” Erica Cabak said of her daughter. “And we were walking by, and he gave her a book!”
Multiple events were going on throughout the day, from dramatic readings at the Essanee Theater to author readings at the Evangeline Theater. Many of the visitors took guided tours of haunts from author James Lee Burke’s books, including Victor’s Cafeteria and Clementine’s Restaurant.
To kick things off in the morning, a Storytellers Limited Author/Publisher Coffee and Panel was held at the Sliman Theater, giving those budding wordsmiths wanting to find a publisher — and publishers seeking new talent — an opportunity to network.
Although the festival was carefully planned and was from all appearances well received, some of the best moments were serendipitous.
“I read her book every autumn,” said David LeBlanc about “Atchafalaya Houseboat,” a book by former Plaquemine resident Gwen Roland. “I saw her in the theater and went home to get my copy.”
LeBlanc and his daughter managed to catch Roland and have her inscribe his copy of the book.
“It’s been through six printings already,” Roland said. “But his is special. It’s a first edition.”
LeBlanc said he learned the hard way a valuable lesson about books.
“Never loan books,” he laughed. “I lost my first copy that way.”
Roland said she made the trip from her current home in the wilds of southeast Georgia to attend the festival.
“I came all this way specifically for this, and for a documentary we are working on with the Nature Conservancy,” Roland said. “It has been a wonderful day.”
Some authors had much shorter commutes to get to the event. Carrie Simon, a former Memphis resident, now resides in Erath, where she writes Christian fiction.
“I’m a Southern gal, so I like to write from that perspective,” Simon said. She was featuring two of her books, “Save Them All” and “Just Find Me,” at her Main Street table.
“I write Christian fiction, and I think someone needs to speak for children in difficult situations,” she said. “I think society needs to do a lot more to protect the rights of children.”
As the afternoon wound down, readers and writers alike began to thin out, preparing to return for the night’s entertainment with Keith Blair and his band at Bouligny Plaza.
The festival wraps up today with a free screening of “In The Electric Mist” at the Grand Theater at 2 p.m.
