News & Notes from the Festival of Faith & Writing

Issue 20: A fond farewell, the final days of our summer reading giveaway, and finding beauty in the ashes, all in this issue of Bookkeeping!

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FROM FESTIVAL HQ

Dear Readers,

If you follow the Festival on Instagram, you know that earlier this week we said a fond farewell to our wonderful intern, Bekah Waalkes. She was an indispensable part of our 2016 Festival team: if you enjoyed Kirstin Valdez Quade at the Festival, you can thank Bekah for first bringing her work to the attention of the planning committee. And if at any point during the Festival a student committee member pointed you in the right direction, you can thank Bekah for that, too, since she organized the students' work schedules. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. She’s smart, has a can’t stop-won’t stop work ethic, an infectious laugh, is a lovely writer herself, and dance moves like no one’s business. And we count ourselves among her biggest fans. We look forward to cheering her on from the sidelines for many years to come! A recent graduate of Calvin College, Bekah is off to teach English in Hungary before heading on to graduate school. I asked her to write a few words about her experience at the Festival before she left, and so, without further ado.

Warmly,

DIRECTOR, FESTIVAL OF FAITH & WRITING

Moving Words Through the World
Bekah Waalkes, Festival intern

I’ve been the intern for the Festival of Faith & Writing since the fall of 2014, all thanks to a providential—and thankfully metaphorical—collision of events. Only one night after I left a job as a nanny, my car died spontaneously, the brakes going out late at night as I drove on the East Beltline. My writing professor encouraged me to apply for the intern position, and a couple of days after my overly-earnest interview, I was hired for the job I’d been dreaming of since I attended the Festival in the spring of 2014. I’ve never been more thankful for the demise of a car.

Working for the Festival has been one of the most rewarding and formative aspects of my time as a student at Calvin. My workdays looked vastly different in each season. At the beginning of the cycle, I researched authors and sat in on planning committee meetings. As Festival approached, the work became both more essential and more menial. Some days I spent hours sorting t-shirts and paper-clipping bingo cards into programs, but then there were other days when the task at hand was extraordinary, such as when I met and hosted Zadie Smith, the author of the book that was the subject of my honors thesis. Spending time with an author I’d admired and studied for so long was an incredible opportunity, though I couldn’t manage much more than sheepish smiles and ill-timed questions. After my advisor told Smith that I had written my honors thesis about On Beauty, Smith signed my heavily annotated copy: “Thank you for writing about me, and keeping my words moving through the world.”

Naturally I’ve thought quite a lot about that inscription, and I think “keeping words moving” is also an apt description of what the Festival does. I spent my last two years of college planning for and agonizing over one weekend in April, three days full of amazing moments and conversations. I saw years of work and research, some of it mine, realized. But I’ve started to see our work didn’t end in April, just as the effect of a book doesn’t end with its publication. It continues to move and live. It’s satisfying to know I contributed to a great event, but it’s even better realizing I had a stake in something that will continue to bear fruit in the minds and work of those who attended for years to come. For that I’m deeply grateful.

I’ll see you all in 2018, this time on the other side of the registration desk.

Summer Reading Giveaway

You have a little less than two weeks to get in on our summer reading giveaway! Post a picture of the stack of books you’re reading this summer to Instagram by August 31, tag #ffwgrmi, and we’ll enter your name in a drawing on September 1. You could win this beautiful stack of books from Jennifer Grant and Margot Starbuck of Book Rescue Ink. We look forward to seeing what’s on your summer reading list!

Did you love the 2016 Festival of Faith & Writing?

Become a Friend of the Festival today and support our work by funding scholarships and ongoing efforts to keep registration prices low.

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