By all accounts, Mendocino College’s first-ever LitFest is an unqualified success! Approximately 400 people attended the Friday evening and all day Saturday events on June 1 and 2. Credit goes to many, beginning with the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, which awarded the Friends of the Mendocino College Library and the College its “Arts for our Future” grant to plan and implement this new literary program. Besides providing innovative arts programming, grantees were charged with creating business partnerships and drawing visitors to the County. Extraordinary exposure from the press in Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma Counties helped create the draw to our event.

Mendocino LitFest is a wide-ranging literary arts program bringing together established and emerging authors, and small and regional presses with interested audiences. Mendocino LitFest provides a time and place for workshops, readings, discussions, book signings and publication sales. Participants to this first festival came from throughout Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma Counties and others traveled from Eureka, the Bay Area, Gilroy, Sacramento and as far away as Santa Monica.

Besides the support of the Community Foundation and the Friends of the Mendocino College Library, we would like to acknowledge the major support of the Ukiah Daily Journal and David Smith at Nine Trees Design. Also, major contributions by Ken McCormick at Visual Identity, his associate Ken Coburn at Global Interprint, and Jay Young at J Design resulted in a beautiful Litfest book publication, “Small Mirrors,” which is available at many Mendocino County bookstores and the College bookstore. We received critical additional support from these businesses: Frey Vineyards, Mendocino Book Company, Tom Liden Photography, The Law Office of Susan Sher, Myers Apothecary Shop, Tierra, Sanford House, Local Flavor and Hampton Inn. Kudos also to staff at these agencies whose strategic contributions were key to our success: Mendocino Transit Authority, Americorps, California Conservation Corps, and the City of Ukiah.

We also would like to thank all our presenters, our book vendors, including Gallery Bookshop, Cheshire Books, Four-Eyed Frog, and Mendocino Book Company, and our food vendors.

Last but not least, a very special thank you to the many volunteers who dedicated time, skills, and their creative energy to accomplishing this innovative program and running it seamlessly.

Dot Brovarney

John Koetzner

Mendocino LitFest/Mendocino College

{mos_sb_discuss:4}