PLEASE share our various forms of PR to spread the word about Festival of Words 2022!
Festival of Words Delaware is a free, annual event for secondary students, teachers, and librarians.
The event was developed to encourage a love of reading and writing by introducing young adults to diverse authors and ideas.
History
Beginnings
Peggy Dilner was the founder of Festival of Words (FOW) Delaware in 2000. She worked at the Educational Resource Center at the University of Delaware after retiring as a librarian for Colonial School District.
In 2002- Newbery Award winner Nancy Willard presented the morning keynote address, entitled, “The Writer’s Journey: A Thousand Miles, A Single Step.” She is a noted poet, has written numerous books for children and young people and received the Newbery Award for her book A Visit to William Blake’s Inn.
Also in 2002, Mel Glenn, author of popular n ovels written in free verse, introduced “The Split Image of American Teens.” A former English teacher, he offered an understanding of adolescents in his books. His most recently published book, Split Image; A Story in Poems, deals with class and race issues intertwined in a mystery.
Laurie Halse Anderson in 2008 was the keynote speaker, shortly after she published SPEAK. See an excerpt of someone ( Sharon Huss Roat, author of young adult novels ) that saw Laurie Halse Anderson at Festival of Words in 2008 HERE!
In 2009 the keynote speaker was Robert Lipsyte. Additional authors that were part of FOW were Matt de la Peña (2012) and Jacqueline Woodson. As part of the Festival of Words, Carney Gray and Michelle Schwantes presented their Poetry Alive! program, in which they dramatize poems.
Ms. Dilner thought Delaware teens deserved a literacy event and the Delaware Department of Education and the University of Delaware agreed, and to date, FOW is still the only literacy event for teens of its kind in the state of Delaware.
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When Ms. Dilner retired, Christy Payne came to the rescue for four years. More speakers began to be a part of FOW, and the first three years the location became home to Appoquinimink High School, then the last of four years at John Dickinson High School. Several authors that attended FOW were:
(2002) Twin Poets
(2003) Marilyn Nelson
(2004) Todd Strasser (Poetry Alive!)
(2005) David Lubar (Poetry Alive!)
(2006) Ellen Wittlinger
(2006) George Ancona
(2007) E.R. Frank
(2007) Pat Mora
(2008) David Klass (Poetry Alive!)
(2010) Patricia McCormick (Poetry Alive!)
(2011) Rita Williams-Garcia (Poetry Alive!)
(2013) Walter Dean Myers (When he was the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature)
(2014) Ellen Hopkins
(2015) Kwame Alexander
(2015) Malindo Lo
(2015) Emily Danforth
(2016) Chris Crutcher
(2016) Jason Reynolds
(2016) Sharon Roat
(2016) Cristin Terrill
(2016) Shauna McVey
(2019) Paul Valponi
(2019) Cordelia Jensen
(2019) Juliana Baggot
(2019) John Micklos
(2019) Chimere McLean
(2019) LaVern Robinson
(2019) The Twin Poets
(2022) Yamile Saied Mendez
(2022) K.A. Holt
(2022) C.H Williams
(2022) Ryan Gebhart
(2022) E.S. Rosalynn
(2022) Deshanna & Trinity Neal
*Article about 2019 Festival of Words
*Article about 2022 Festival of Words
and a few more we hope some of your long term attendees might recall?!
In this year of 2015, Andrea Rashbaum transitioned into the Festival of Words director and gratefully, she is in this role today with exciting authors, talks, and creative ways to look at literacy amid an ever-changing literary world.