EpicFest, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s free literary festival for children and their families, is back and in person after a two-year hiatus. This event will take place on November 4-5, 2022. On Friday, November 4, the featured authors and illustrators will visit various area schools where they will speak with students. On Saturday, November 5, these authors and illustrators will participate in a day-long festival at ImaginOn: The Joe & Joan Martin Center, 300 E. Seventh Street, Charlotte. The event will start at 10:00 a.m. and conclude at 3:00 p.m.
I contacted Walker Doermann, one of the organizers of this year’s EpicFest, and asked her for more information about the event. Here is what she sent to me:
This year’s EpicFest features ten authors who call the Carolinas their home. After visiting Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools on Friday, they will be at ImaginOn on Saturday to speak about their newest books. It will be a great time for young readers to engage with some of their favorite authors and hear about their writing inspiration, and for aspiring young writers to ask them questions about their writing process. For example, how did Derick Wilder come to write the hilariously titled Does a Bulldozer Have a Butt? Inquiring minds want to know!
In addition to a strong author lineup on Saturday, there will be lots of hands-on activities for children of all ages. They can assemble their own miniature sensory bin, decorate a nature crown to take home, and crack the code on a mysterious escape box. Plenty of festive touches make this a day to remember: book giveaways on the Hornets bus, face painting, roving costumed book characters, and other epic surprises throughout the day!
As Walker mentions, all of the featured guests at this year’s EpicFest are from North or South Carolina. These guests include Renée Ahdieh, Tameka Fryer Brown, Patrice Gopo, Gordon C. James, Kelly Starling Lyons, Kwame Mbalia, Matt Myers, Maya Myers, Derick Wilder, and Alicia D. Williams. Books by these guests will be available for purchase, and there will be book-signing opportunities at the event. For more information about this year’s featured guests, please click on the following link: https://www.cmlibrary.org/epicfest
In thinking about the return of EpicFest, I am reminded of the original meaning of the word epic. Nowadays people use the word epic as an adjective to describe something that is outstanding or impressive, but the word originally referred to a long poem narrating the travels and adventures of a legendary hero, such as Odysseus from Homer’s The Odyssey. In such epics, the hero usually longs to return home. As Odysseus says, “I long—I pine, all my days—to travel home and see the dawn of my return.” In a way, I think this quotation relates to the return of EpicFest. During the two years that EpicFest was on hiatus, I, and many other book lovers, longed for the return of EpicFest. Fortunately, for all of us in Storied Charlotte, the dawn of EpicFest’s triumphant return home to ImaginOn is nearly upon us; it will arrive on the fifth of November.
