On Saturday, 26 authors and illustrators will descend on Jackson’s Trailborn hotel for the third annual Jackson Hole Book Festival. Festival Founder and Director Sharon Felzer previewed the potentially uncomfortable, but always topical conversations on power, loss and family cover-ups, just to name a few.
The public is welcome to attend the event for free and is asked to register ahead of time. Felzer is a KHOL board member and KHOL is an event sponsor.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. — Ed.
Sophia Boyd-Fliegel (KHOL): How did you go about selecting this year’s authors?
Sharon Felzer: Well, I’m always focused on what are some of the key issues that we’re facing as a society, not just in Jackson, but across our community, across the valley, and across the country. We look at fiction, and we look at nonfiction, and look at the kinds of books that will leave people thinking, learning, and inspired.
SBF: How much of the book festival is an ideas festival?
SF: We do refer to the Jackson Hole Book Festival as ‘conversation for the community, discourse, and ideas.’ We’re very interested in everyone sitting around being able to converse in a safe space about issues that are often controversial. Talking about China is controversial, talking about wealth is controversial. Talking about pain and emotions is often controversial and difficult, but a book festival allows people to be sitting around the table with the authors, learning from their deep reporting and their deep historical perspective.
SBF: One thing that people might be used to talking about here in Teton County is the wealth gap. And we’ve got a conversation slated with three authors who write about power, money, and the secrets of how it accumulates. Talk about those books.
SF: We have Theo Baker’s book, “How to Rule the World,” which is about privilege at Stanford University. We also have Evan Osnos’ book, “The Have and Have Yachts,” which I think says a lot just in the title. And then we have Boston College law professor Ray Madoff’s book on how the tax policies of this country over a hundred years have been used to help the wealthy remain wealthy. Not just help them remain wealthy, but help generation after generation remain wealthy. And what is the implication of this for the rest of society? So we look at how tax policies have allowed wealth to grow amongst a certain class of people. Has this helped people in terms of philanthropy, or has it taken resources away from government? They all bring different perspectives. Evan Osnos looks at the individual experience of billionaires and Professor Madoff really explores deeply the taxation policy.
SBF: We’re also going to see some conversations about more personal issues, even some issues that are more stigmatized, like abuse in families. The Tetons’ own Alexandra Fuller will talk about her memoir of losing her 21-year-old son, and Wyoming-raised writing professor Nina McConigley will talk her novel that explores American Indian identity and family cover-ups. How do you curate these more vulnerable conversations in a bigger space?
SF: It’s very important to have people be able to listen to fiction authors who bring important stories to the fore that attendees can relate to, may not be comfortable talking about, but can see themselves in characters. So we have pain and redemption. We have love and joy. We have the commitment to family and what that devotion to family means and [what] responsibility to family means. What does it mean to be an immigrant? How can you fit in? Do you ever fit in, do you ever feel that you are part of the fabric of America? So it’s a way for attendees to be comfortable in a space where some deep emotions are being shared by authors who have either experienced it or have created characters who represent these feelings.
SBF: You’re bringing so many people to the festival this year. It’s kind of like a music festival where you know that you won’t be able to experience everything there live. How should people navigate that?
SF: Well, first of all, don’t get mad at me, because people often come up and they say, ‘I wanted to see everything.’ The good news this year, we’re so delighted to have support from the [Teton County] Library Foundation and the library itself. And so we are going to be able to live stream from three of the four rooms. And we will be taping all of the sessions, and they will be available on our website a few weeks after the festival. If you miss anything, you will able to go to the festival and hear it there.
