by Chloë Moore ’24
The Twin Cities Book Fest, organized by local literary magazine Rain Taxi Review of Books, was back and better than ever this year! Taking place on October 15th at the State Fairgrounds Progress Center, TCBF is an exciting annual gathering of writers, booksellers, publishers, magazines, and more. As the festival fell on parents’ weekend this year, I had the pleasure of dragging my parents and sister along with me, and it was definitely worth it (I’m sure they’d agree).
TCBF takes up one large room and is stacked with every book-related product you can imagine. There are rows and rows of booths, featuring local publishers like Graywolf, Coffee House, Milkweed, and Spout Press, book organizations including Feminist Book Club, university publications from Hamline, Anoka, and the University of Minnesota, author tables, and booths for local organizations including libraries, newspapers, and nonprofits. The festival also included all-day programming, such as readings, author signings, and the Minnesota Author Mashup, which featured a variety of authors in conversation with one another, including former Macalester professor Stephanie Burt!
The ambience of the festival is a truly special one, and something I’d been dying to get back to since I first attended the festival last year. This year, my experience was a little more focused: I was mainly interested in learning about internship and publication/submission opportunities at local presses and undergraduate literary magazines, respectively. Having a goal definitely made the process of walking up and down the aisles more streamlined, and it kept my bank account much more intact than last year (I hauled 13 books back to my dorm last year; this year I kept it to 1, which was Jawbone, by Mónica Ojeda).
For me, the highlight was meeting the editor-in-chief of The Water~Stone Review, Meghan Maloney-Vinz, in person. I had the honor of having a poem included in this year’s magazine, and it was super fun to be able to pick up my author copies and meet the people behind the magazine for the first time.
Mostly, it’s amazing to be able to ingrain yourself into the local literary scene as an undergraduate. Macalester’s proximity to the Twin Cities, and our connections to the awesome reading, writing, and publishing opportunities is one of my favorite things about this school. Events like the TCBF are really a joyful experience and make the post-grad world feel a lot less scary for English majors. TCBF should be back next year, and I can’t recommend the experience highly enough. Just make sure to set a budget ahead of time, and maybe don’t go with friends who enable questionable financial decisions!