KBAC will hold its Fifth Annual Edible Book Festival this Friday

By Ken Slocum
Western Herald

This Friday, local artists will display their works of art – which will then promptly be eaten.

The Kalamazoo Book Arts Center (KBAC) will hold their Fifth Annual Edible Book Festival on Friday April 2nd during the Art Hop in Downtown Kalamazoo.

“The Edible Book Festival is an international event that takes place in libraries across 18 nations,” said Jeff Abshear, director of the KBAC.

The Edible Book Festival was started by a library in Los Angeles in 1998, according to Abshear.

As an April Fools’ Day-based festival, it hones in on making light of books and their titles. The premise of the festival is to make an edible replica or representation of a favorite book. Last year’s entries ranged from books that were made out of cake all the way to a bowl of margaritas with a bottle next to it labeled “Tequila Mockingbird.”

The competition will take place at 7 p.m. and will be judged by award-winning author David Small. Small has won two Caldecott Medals and several other awards.

The winner will be determined by Small, and there will also be a People’s Choice Award. Small’s choice will win a day-long workshop at the KBAC as well as a rare copy of Small’s book “When Dinosaurs Came with Everything.”

The winner of the People’s Choice will receive their choice of one of the center’s Broadside posters, which showcase a poet with a picture and a copy of one of their poems.

Both winners will receive a copy of Small’s new book titled “Stitches: A Memoir.”

The event, which is held yearly, draws between 15 and 20 entries as well as hundreds of attendees.

WMU student Shadell Wilcox attended the event last year.

“The event was great and the atmosphere was buzzing with excitement,” said WMU student Shadell Wilcox who attended last year.

The same night as the event, a new exhibit called “The Illustrated Accordian” will open as well, Abshear said. The exhibit, which is devoted to accordion books, will host 100 books from all over the country. An accordion book is a book that has been folded to open like an accordion. One of the main attractions of the exhibit is a book that has actually been made out of an accordion with the pages replacing the bellows.

The Edible Book Festival will be held Friday, April 2 at 7 p.m. at the Park Trade Center, which is located at 326 W. Kalamazoo Ave.

Those interested in registering a book for the event can do so between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Friday. Judging starts at 7 p.m. and the eating of the books commences at 7:30 p.m.

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Posted by HeraldAdmin on Mar 31 2010. Filed under A & E, Weekend Scene. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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