Festival Notes, Saturday

Well. Sorry about last night ... we were watching I Capture the Castle until midnight. When you have six younger siblings, opportunities for peacefully renting an R-rated movie don't come around very often.

But anyway.

Yesterday morning we heard Randy Testa of Walden Media speak on "C.S. Lewis and the Moral Imagination." Good stuff--not much I hadn't heard before from On Three Ways, but good stuff, nonetheless.

Moral agency in the world through fantasy

Fantasy imbues reality with new dimensions of depth

Fantasy helps kids make sense of reality

Then I sat in the same room with Kadir Nelson and Carole Boston Weatherford and listened to them talk about historical fiction.

Jeffrey Overstreet gave a lovely presentation entitled, The Eagles are Coming: Faith, Fairy Tales and Fantasy. Anyone who once heard and chokes up talking about Madeleine L'Engle is, as far as I'm concerned, of the race of Joseph.

We attended an amazing performance of poetry spoken and sung ... an a cappella choir in tuxes and black dresses, singing the words of Emily Dickinson and e.e. cummings and Dylan Thomas. Beyond description. Not to mention Katherine Paterson was sitting a few rows over.

And then Yann Martel, author of The Life of Pi, which I freely admit to not having read, spoke last night. While he and I differ theologically (majorly), I love this idea. You've probably heard of it, but, wow, so cool.

Fast forward to today, Saturday, bleary-eyed but excited to hear the likes of Joan Bauer.

I had no idea she'd be so wonderful. I mean, yes, when you're fourteen and reading Hope Was Here for the first time, Joan is All That. But as time goes by, you move on to other heroes. She's certainly back on the list, however. What an energetic speaker--and so very, very gracious. Her frank and emphatic Christianity surprised me, I must say, despite having read all her books. An encouragement to all those who wish to let truth and beauty, rather than Elsie Dinsmore, declare the glory of God in their writing.

In order to make characters real, you must get stuck.

Our writing is like a geyser ... a geyser happens when everything below ground is going wrong. Yet the end result is an amazing thing of beauty.

As people lined up to speak with Joan afterward, I read the name tag of the ordinary lady behind me ... "Nikki Grimes." Strangely familiar. OH! (cue Beauty and the Beast music) Could it be? Is it she? Nikki Grimes! I was on celebrity watch the rest of the day. :)

Okay, then I heard a solid practical session from Chip MacGregor, including bits like "The Big Secret to Selling Your Novel: Become a Great Writer."

So it's late and mom is glaring at the sound of typing ... I'll skip around and wrap up with the last session of the weekend, Katherine Paterson on beauty. She read from Bread and Roses, Too, waving her arms and using a broad Italian accent, superb, the scene that gives the book its title ... we want more than bread. We want some sort of something beautiful for our beautiful children. She quoted Schiller, saying that beauty is achieved through play. And then she dismissed the festival by encouraging writers to return home, not bogged down by a heavy sense of needing to create big, beautiful Art, but to go home and play.

And that, as Gary Schmidt's grandmother would apparently say, that will do.