Zachary Pullen Illustration

A limited number of Iris Giclee prints of this illustration will be produced. Click here if you're interested in purchasing one.

About the 2010 Book Festival

The Equality State Book Festival is back for its third incarnation on the 24th anniversary of the annual Casper College/ARTCORE Literary Conference. This year, we’ll host 16 authors and illustrators for a vast variety of exciting events on September 24 & 25 in Casper, WY.

Our participants this year include (but are certainly not limited to) 2008 favorite Jack Gantos; award-winning novelists Jaimee Wriston Colbert and John Vernon; children’s author and illustrator extraordinaire Zak Pullen; teaching talent Gene Gagliano; poets Ravi Shankar and Robert Wrigley; Alaskan author and illustrator Ray Troll, and Idaho memoirist Kim Barnes. Nonfiction notable Lee Gutkind, judge of the 2010 Wyoming Arts Council fellowship contest, will join us for the fellowship prize reading, with Casper’s own Nina McConigley and the three fellowship recipients.

Check out all of our participants on the “Authors” page. In addition to the readings, there will be panel discussions, book signings, creative writing craft talks, a gala banquet, and a poetry slam emceed by the ever-popular George Vlastos. Click on the “Events” tab above for more details on all of these dynamic happenings. Registration for the banquet is available at the “Register” tab.

Before you head off to read up on the book festival events and these wonderful artists, we'd like to thank the Natrona County Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) for their early, generous support, as well as UW/CC and the English department at the University of Wyoming. We would also like to thank the Natrona County School District, the Wyoming Arts Council, the Wyoming Humanities Council, and the Casper College Foundation for their support and dedication to fostering the arts in Wyoming. Finally, we'd like to express our appreciation to Casper College and ARTCORE for over two decades of steady support for an annual literary conference in Casper.

Laurie Lye and Holly Wendt, Co-directors


The 2008 Book Festival is a Big Success!

The Equality State Book Festival celebrated books, writers, reading and the written word from Thursday, Sept. 18 through Saturday, Sept. 20,2008 at Casper College and at various locations around Casper. The celebration marked the 22nd anniversary of the annual Casper College/ARTCORE literary conference. Over three days, more than 35 authors gave readings, led workshops and talked on panels. Authors included poets, novelists, historians, journalists, and memoir writers. They ranged from such headliners as Gary Ferguson, C.J. Box, Alexandra Fuller and Jack Gantos to lesser knowns. A dozen more unpaid authors also read from their works in 15-minute intervals all day Saturday. All authors had strong Wyoming connections in their lives and work.

All told, more than 2,800 people attended festival events. We hope to continue to encourage all Wyoming readers and writers in the future. The year 2006 saw the first Equality State Book Festival in Casper. In September 2007, the Wyoming Center for the Book at the Wyoming State Library in Cheyenne stepped up and put on the first Wyoming Book Festival. Casper College has now produced a second Equality State Book Festival, and the Center for the Book has earmarked Sept. 19, 2009 for a second Wyoming Book Festival. Make sense? We invite everyone with an appreciation for the literary arts to learn more about the next Wyoming Book Festival and we hope the Cheyenne-Casper swap will continue.

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We would like to thank our sponsors for the 2010 Equality State Book Festival:

Wyoming Humanities Council Natrona County School District

Supported in part by a grant from the Wyoming Arts Council through funding from the Wyoming State Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Many thanks to the Natrona County Public Library and the Tate Geological Museum.