The Sacramento branch of the California Writers Club is hosting its second annual Book Festival tomorrow, welcoming nearly 150 authors for a day of readings, panels and scavenger hunts celebrating local writers and promoting literacy.
The 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. event will be held at the Shepard Garden and Arts Center at the northeastern end of McKinley Park in East Sacramento.
Notable authors featured will include New York Times bestselling author James Rollins, Catriona McPherson, Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson and Bryan Patrick Avery.
Most of the participating authors are Northern California locals who have self-published or partnered with small presses. That’s something Scott Coatsworth, who organized the festival, is proud of because the event was created largely to support local authors.
“We’re going to have 146 authors total and I would say out of those, they’re pretty much all from Northern California,” he said.
The Sacramento Book Festival will be Saturday, May 31, 2025, at the Shepard Garden and Arts Center in East Sacramento.(Courtesy/Scott Coatsworth)
But Coatsworth said another goal of his event is addressing declining literacy rates, particularly among young readers. This is a trend he noted was worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and by a growing dependence on generative AI for reading and writing.
“We’re outsourcing our writing, our searching, everything, and there is a critical function that you learn with reading and writing that, if people stop doing it, we’re going to lose that ability,” he said. “You encounter a lot of different ideas when you’re reading or writing a book that you’re just not going to run across if you don’t have that perspective.”
According to a Sacramento Literacy Foundation report from earlier this year, nearly two-thirds of third graders are reading below grade level. That’s why Coatsworth said the festival is working with several local literacy organizations to create a “literacy corner” in front of the venue.
Mustard Seed School, a free private school for unhoused youth, will be accepting donations of new or gently used books during the event.
“We’re looking for K-8 books for [guests] to bring to the festival for a book drive,” he said.
The Book Den, an all-volunteer used book store operated by Friends of the Sacramento Public Library, will be giving out free kids’ books during the event. Any remaining books will be donated to Mustard Seed School after the festival.
Additionally, 916 Ink, a Sacramento-based creative writing and literacy nonprofit providing tutoring to local youth, will have a booth selling student-created anthologies.
Sacramento Literacy Foundation
April Javist is the executive director of the Sacramento Literacy Foundation, which is a supporter of the event.
“We’re not going to fix this problem, any one of us, by ourselves,” she said. “It’s very important that we all have the information and we all can exercise our commitment to all kids reading.”
The one criticism Javist had was that the festival is not diverse.
“I would’ve liked to see more diversity in this year’s [festival], but that takes a lot of intention,” she said.
Javist highlighted that Sacramento’s literacy issue isn’t unique and largely has to do with not having “the right things in place,” which she argued include proper curricula and teacher training.
“What COVID did for literacy was expose parents to the fact that their kids couldn’t read,” she said. “Most parents think their kids are learning to read in school, but it’s not happening like that exactly.”
Javist said many kids are learning to read from private tutors only affluent families can afford. Poor kids, particularly those going to underfunded schools, end up suffering the most.
“Not reading means not voting, not finding full employment in the workforce, not going to higher education, not achieving upward mobility,” she said. “Not reading is an indicator of a difficult future that doesn’t get any better.”
916 Ink
Dan Barr is production coordinator for 916 Ink. They have published roughly 340 anthologies of youth creative writing, some of which will be for sale during the festival.
He argued that the more students read, the better they are at writing.
“Reading helps with spelling, learning how to use punctuation, expanding your vocabulary, paragraph breaks,” he said. “So hopefully, you’re taking that to your classroom.”
Barr said his organization also works with immigrant and refugee students, who he noted often feel shame for speaking a different language. The organization works with these students to help them write in their native language and, eventually, to translate them to English.
“Language is not inherently shameful, background isn’t shameful, being an immigrant isn’t shameful, being a refugee isn’t shameful,” he said. “We want to hear your story in your language even if we don’t understand it.
He recounted a story of a refugee student from Ukraine who didn’t have a good grasp of English and was shy about sharing her writing.
“I told her, ‘We understand but we love your story and we love what you’ve written here,’” he said. “And it gave her the confidence to continue to write in English. It took a while for her to let us read it, and she was happy with the story that we printed.”
As the festival prepares to open its doors, organizers and participants, like Barr, hope it becomes a step toward creating a more literate and empowered Sacramento.
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