Iowa City Celebrating World Book Day (and Night) With Multiple Events

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This is part one of a two part interview with John Kenyon, executive director of the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) City of Literature organization in Iowa City. Kenyon was named to the position last fall after a long period serving as Director of Operations and Editor at the Corridor Media Group, which includes the Corridor Business Journal.

In part one we talk about the events taking place today during World Book Day and World Book Night. In Part Two we will talk about Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature taking over the Iowa City Book Festival this year, and what changes will come as a result of that.

Editor's Note: This is an edited and abridged version of the interview.

Iowa City Patch: Well I think we should start by talking about the thing that is the closest at hand, which is the community book talk you will be holding today. Can you fell me a little bit about it?

John Kenyon: April 23 is UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day and locally we have decided to celebrate that in a few different ways, but the main one is with our community book talk program.

See Also: Read More about the Community Book Talk Progam, scheduled for today at noon at the Sycamore Mall. Includes a List of Presenters, including a few well known authors, a book shop owner, and one very passionate Hawkeye wrestling coach. 

Link also includes information about World Book Night and other special events taking place as part of the day.

We had the first of these last April 23rd, and it was well received enough that we did it again in October, so we're really planning to have this every six months or so. It involves having prominent members of the community, business people, usually somebody from the Hawkeye Athletic Community, to come and talk shortly about a book that has been meaningful to them in their lives.

It really is an opportunity for the community to hear more about books that they haven't read, or maybe get some ideas about some things they could read.

It's been very interesting thus far. We've tried to get a good cross section of representatives from the community, or as much as you can with six or seven representatives each time, but the books that they've chosen have been really interesting. It's always fascinating for me to hear someone talk passionately about a book that they really enjoy: Books that they have read again and again, or books that they have taken life lessons from.
 
This time we're going to be doing it at the Sycamore Mall, we're partnering with them. It seems that the Southeast Side is somewhat underrepresented with the literary programming, and they had reached out to us for wanting to do something with us, and it seemed to make sense.

Iowa City Patch: You said you've done this a few times before. What are some presenters that stick out in your mind, and why?

Kenyon: I'd like to give you four if I may:

The first time, Charlie Funk from Midwest One Bank. He talked about a book called "The Miracle of St. Anthony" about an Indiana High School team coached by Bob Hurley. I read it and it was excellent.

Nate Kaeding, the former Iowa Kicker, presented and talked about the "Art of Fielding." I was on the fence about reading it but he was so passionate about how it encompassed all of the different aspects of playing sports, better than anything that he had ever read, so I picked it up and read it and loved it.

Margaret McCaffery, Coach McCaffery's wife brought in a selection of five or six children's books, because that's what she had read most recently. And she talked about the experience of reading those books to her kids.

And then Ryan West, from West Music, talked about the book "Go Dog Go." He took us very literally when we advertised ahead of the time that this should be a book that changed their life. Well that was the first book that he had ever read when he learned to read as a young child. So you've got a thirtysomething professional here in town talking about an old Doctor Seuss book. It was just really fascinating to hear him talk about his love for reading that book.

Iowa City Patch: Do they read excerpts of the books?

Kenyon: They don't tend to, although some of the times do read short sections to show that this is the type of writing that they like. We only give them five minutes each, so the program has a fairly brisk pace.

Iowa City Patch: Then there's a sort of meet and greet afterward, time for discussions with the community?

Kenyon: Yes, it's just a fun relaxed event. We encourage people to bring brown bag lunches and we're partnering with Panera so they will also be providing cookies.

Iowa City Patch: So moving on from that event, what is the next big event for the City of Literature?

Kenyon: Well April 23rd is actually a pretty busy day for us.

In addition to the Community Book Talk, for World Book Day, it's also World Book Night on the same day.

We have about 40-45 people in Iowa City signed up for World Book Night. It's an endeavor that started in the United Kingdom and it came to the United States about two years ago. It's a consortium of publishers who print a special edition of a book, and people sign up and get 20 copies of this book and they pledge to give them out on April 23rd to light or nonreaders. 

So we've been working with that organization, and with Prairie Lights, which is a local partner, to get these books in the hands of these people. 

We have contacted a lot of social service agencies, neighborhood centers, shelter house, places like that to see if they would be interested in having givers come out. And then some of the givers have their own plans for how they're going to give the books out. So 45 X 20 we're going to have almost 900 additional books into the hands of readers as a part of World Book Night.

We've doubled participating since last year and our hope is for more and more people to learn about it and become involved and hopefully put it in their tickler file for next year.

Iowa City Patch: So this is going to be a rather book heavy day in Iowa City.

Kenyon: Yes, World Book Night was scheduled to coincide with World Book Day, but being a City of Literature we had already scheduled events for both.

Iowa City Patch: So what it comes to is that in Iowa City you can't get away with just doing one book event?

Kenyon: Yes, that's right.

Epilogue: In addition to the UNESCO programming, special giveaways will be offered from participating Iowa City book stores in honor of World Book Day.

• The Haunted Bookshop will distribute free book recommendation postcards for customers to share their favorite book suggestions with friends and family.
• Defunct Books will give a long-stem rose to every customer who purchases a book.
• Iowa Book will hand out free St. George prayer cards.
• Murphy-Brookfield Books will hand out tea roses to each customer who purchases a book.
• Prairie Lights Bookstore has partnered with Every Bloomin’ Thing to distribute one long-stem rose to each customer who purchases a book.
• Uptown Bill’s will offer customers one free used book from the shelves.