Book fest turnout pleases promoters

The Virginia Festival of the Book wrapped up its weeklong run Sunday having appeared to draw consistently large crowds despite the economic climate.

“Honestly, we were afraid that nobody from outside the area would come because of the economic thing,” Nancy Damon, the festival’s program director, said.

Damon said she heard of people coming in from Vermont and Michigan, among other states.

“I was shocked,” she said.

Last year’s festival events drew more than 23,000 people, she said. Attendance numbers for this year’s will be available later this week. The festival typically draws between 60 percent and 65 percent of its attendance from the Charlottesville area.

Anecdotally, Damon said she was hearing reports throughout the festival that events big and small were packed or sold out.

Sold-out events included those featuring authors Rita Dove, Adriana Trigiani, Stephen L. Carter and John Grisham.

Robert Vaughan, president of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, said the Dove event, which featured music by Dave Matthews Band violinist Boyd Tinsley, brought in the festival’s largest-ever crowd. The festival is in its 15th year.

“We filled the Paramount [Theater],” Vaughan said. Roughly 1,000 people attended, he said.

Vaughan said he thinks that this year’s overall attendance numbers should be close to 2008’s, even with fewer events on the schedule.

Vaughan said the festival taped one of its events to air on public radio’s “With Good Reason” and plans to tape more events in the future to “get programs out to a broader audience.”

This year’s festival featured approximately 140 events aimed at adults and roughly 40 events put on by area schools. Damon said the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, which orchestrates the festival, decided before the economic downturn that it would scale back the number of adult events from last year’s 170.

She also added that corporate sponsors were down but that preliminary estimates showed the number of individual donors was up. Other sources of funding included the city, Albemarle County, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Carol Troxell, owner of New Dominion Bookshop, described the independent seller’s sales during the festival as “OK.” But Troxell added, “All of the events seemed to attract standing-room only.”