Book-lovers convene

South End Authors' Book Festival

For the second year in a row, the South End Authors' Book Festival shone a light on more than two dozen South End literary talents in the relaxed setting of the Harriet Tubman House, 566 Columbus Avenue, with snacks, wine and soft drinks to help the conversation flow. The convivial chat among longtime neighbors, creative writers and avid readers served as an antidote to post-election blues.

The festival, which included authors who live in the South End as well as former South Enders who have published books about the neighborhood, was organized by a committee that included community activist Mel King and local historians Alison Barnet, founding editor and former columnist of the South End News and Russ Lopez, author of Boston's South End: The Clash of Ideas in a Historic Neighborhood as well as Charlie Caizzi, author of Just So You Know, a funny and candid memoir of his youth in the formerly residential block at Northampton and Fellows Streets. According to Barnet, "I think it turned out very well and people enjoyed it. Attendance was very good. Book sales weren't very good, which is too bad but we did all right I think."

Barnet, the author of Extravaganza King: Robert Barnet and Boston Musical Theater about her great-grandfather, a successful theatrical writer and producer; South End Character, a collection of her popular columns for the South End News; and Sitting Ducks, a whodunit novel based on actual events in the South End of the early 1970s, sold three of her books. Jean English Gibran, widow of the internationally renowned sculptor, Kahlil Gibran, was on hand to promote a recent update of Kahlil Gibran: His Life and World, a biography that she and her husband wrote of the poet Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet who was her husband's older cousin and namesake, and Love Made Visible, her account of her 50 years of marriage to the sculptor. More Than Words bookstore also had a table offering a glimpse of their wares and their work.

The festival boasted an impressive variety of genres, subjects and voices, including poets, Lynne Potts and Blackfoot Warrior; artist, illustrator and the Piano Craft Guild's resident historian Thom Donovan, who wrote and illustrated Lennon at Sea, a graphic novel on John Lennon's sojourn in Bermuda in his final months; Yes, Pun Intended, a collection of hilarious and clever visual and verbal puns; and the illustrator of maps of the South End, Jamaica Pond and other sites that have been used as maps and promotional material by area business and tourism groups. Donovan offered visitors postcards of images from Yes, Pun Intended in addition to copies of his books. Author Dick Vacca discussed his 2012 book, The Boston Jazz Chronicles, a history of the South End's heyday from the 1930s to early 1960s as a mecca for musicians to stay and play at the neighborhood's many nightclubs and rooming houses, with visitors including South End native Gloria Ganno, herself a master story teller who has written about her youth in the long-gone multi-cultural enclave the New York Streets. Carla Coch, who relocated to the South End from upstate New York, showcased her bilingual (English and Chinese) art book, Spirit & Vessel: Dao yu Qi, about the Chinese porcelain master, Shi Yuren.

Many of the authors enjoyed the chance to showcase and discuss their works, to meet each other and neighbors at the festival. Caizzi, who now makes his home in Middleboro with his wife, Bricelle, summed up: "[The festival] is wonderful. It was great last year, it's great this year. I'm a Boston kid and the book is about Boston; it's about growing up in the '40s and '50s, and I don't see any less camaraderie now than I did 70 years ago."

Florence Potter

Thom Donovan