As
published in the Spring 2013 Ojai Valley
News Visitors Guide
WordFest Turns 4
and Waxes Poetic
In its fourth year, Ojai WordFest is
once again reinventing itself. The four-day literary festival, a celebration of
words, ideas and stories, runs from Thursday, April 10th through
Monday, April 13th, and this year plans to shine a lyrical light on
poetry.
“We’re refining our festival. We
learn something every year, and we’ve learned what the community wants,” says
festival founder Sequoia Hamilton, who created the festival to establish Ojai
as a literary destination for new and veteran writers of all ages and genres.
With grants from the local Rotary
Club, the City of Ojai and private donors, Hamilton has finally gained some
financial freedom with this event.
“This is the first year we have a
budget,” says Hamilton, who had in previous years operated on a shoestring. “We’re
putting that generosity back into the community by putting the festival into
the schools.”
Since April is National Poetry Month
(Hamilton says it’s the largest literary celebration on the planet), Hamilton
saw that as the driving inspiration for the festival’s schedule, and looked to
the schools to serve as venues for some of the events, with their students as
participants.
“We’re putting a poet into each
school,” says Hamilton, who has invited teaching poets to partner with a local
school where they will speak to classes about their experiences with the genre
and lead short writing exercises for the students.
Among the poet mentors is local
poet and Ojai native Akka B. On Friday, April 11th, she will present
at Oak Grove School where her 14-year-old daughter is a student.
Akka says she is enthusiastic
about being a part of the festival and connecting teens through the written word.
“I’m passionate about that
process – of kids feeling comfortable to access their words,” Akka says. “When
they are given the opportunity…it’s so immediately empowering. There’s nothing
like seeing a kid come alive.”
Akka says she vividly remembers what
it was like to be a teen struggling to communicate those new thoughts and
feelings that are a difficult part of coming of age.
“As a kid I was so afraid to
speak,” she says. “We all recognize the struggle…that child is still in us.”
Later that evening, Akka will
meet up with the other poet mentors to put on a
poetry
showcase featuring youth and teens reading their work.
Serving as the unofficial bookends
for the festival, local novelists Doc and Zoe Murdock will kick things off on
Thursday, April 10th at 5:30 p.m. by showcasing their
regularly-scheduled weekly creative writing workshop at
the Ojai Library.
“We’ve been teaching this
workshop every Thursday for the last 10 years,” says Doc, a retired writing
professor and competitive runner who has published five novels.
Though they maintain a steady
core group of 12 to 20 members each week, in total they have had about 450
fledgling and professional writers from college students to retirees come
through the workshop. Some have been there since day one.
Doc and Zoe first met at the
University of Utah’s creative writing program and made their way to Ojai in
2004 when they retired to pursue writing full time. They decided to hold the
free weekly workshops because they missed the student interaction.
The workshop typically includes instruction
on specific writing techniques followed by readings and critiques. The focus is
squarely on fiction, and the critiques, given by the students as well as the
Murdocks, are honest but never sugar-coated.
“They (the participants) learn
very quickly that everyone has their best interests at heart,” Zoe says. Her
novel, Torn by God: A Family’s Struggle
with Polygamy, has clung to the top of the Amazon charts in its category
since it was first published four years ago.
On the
final night of the festival, Monday, April 13th, Hamilton will honor
the Murdocks with a “Literary Legends” award for their contributions to Ojai’s
vibrant writing community. The evening will start off at 7:00 p.m. with
readings of Ars Poetica, which are poems
about poetry, and will feature a presentation by Ventura County’s first ever Poet Laureate, Mary Kay Rummel, a
writing professor whose award-winning poems have appeared in
numerous literary journals and anthologies. The evening’s events will be held at the Ojai Arts Center, in celebration of its 75th
year in continuous operation.
Since
its inception, the festival has attracted attendees with a passion for words
from all over the world. Other events over the festival’s four days include a happy
hour with books, a day-long spa writing retreat, various writing workshops and
a late-night spoken word slam at Bart’s Books. For more, visit www.ojaiwordfest.com.
