Last weekend, from Sept. 12 – 15, 2024, local literature lovers celebrated the 4th annual Ithaca Is Books Festival in the Commons. With open mics, guest readings, and an outdoor book fair, the event has expanded to include 19 different businesses, breaking records in comparison to previous years.
Home to Cornell, IC, plethora of local publishers, it’s no secret that Ithaca is a literary town. Readers, scholars, and book connoisseurs constantly flock upstate to explore universities, peruse endless libraries, and see visiting authors.
To celebrate the flourishing literary atmosphere in Ithaca, Buffalo Street Books, Autumn Leaves, and Odyssey Bookstore coordinated the first Ithaca Is Books festival in 2021. Since the Holy Trinity of downtown bookstore introduced this custom, it has only garnered more interest from booksellers and writers in the surrounding Finger Lakes community.
When asked about the festival’s recent growth, Autumn Leaves owner Ramsey Kanaan responded enthusiastically.
“The first year was throwing a stone into a pond and the ripples keep going, getting bigger and bigger,” Kanaan said. Founder of PM Press, an independent collective publisher centered in Binghamton, Kanaan and his associates purchased Autumn Leaves from founder Joseph Wetmore on Jan. 1 2023. Since then, the PM Press team has assimilated to the Ithaca business family, preserving Autumn Leaves as a cultural trading post for musical and literary ideas.
Kanaan was particularly proud of the festival’s guest reader line-up: authors Katie Tastrom, Kenneth Wishnia, Jim Feast, Antonia Carcelen, and Kevin Young made second floor pit stops to discuss their publications. The owner also expressed excitement about moving festivities outdoors.
“This is the first year we’ve done a book fair outside in the commons,” he told The Sun.
One of several businesses that ran the pop-up bookshop on the commons was Burning Books, a radical Buffalo bookstore that supports movements against oppression. Co-owner Theresa Baker-Pickering was delighted about the chance to participate in outdoor sales and the festival’s unique collaborative experience.
“We like selling books outside, particularly events like this where people are already coming,” she said. “You get people showing up for the book fest and people who just stumble upon us.”
Baker-Pickering founded Burning Books with her husband on the anniversary of the Attica prison uprising in 2009. An exclusive focus on social justice issues and sustainability contribute to the store’s empowering influence on its own community: on Sunday, Sept. 15, this collection’s reach was extended to the Commons.
Because of the joint effort by bookstore owners, publications often out of reach are able to find their way into new hands here in Ithaca. The festival not only involves book talks and sales, but interactive activities to inspire a greater love for reading. From Drop In Journal Making at Ithaca Print Commons to a Poetry Slam at The Downstairs, orchestrators strived to accommodate all age demographics.
With an impressive 34 events hosted this year, the Ithaca Is Books Festival is only forecasted to achieve new heights. In regards to it’s success, Kanaan reiterated his plans to continue the tradition with even more added components.
“As it’s growing, we’re finding different ways to engage with the community,” he said. “We’re engaging more and more.”
Kira Walter is the Lifestyle Editor at the Cornell Daily Sun. She can be reached at [email protected].