The Albany County Public Library held its first-ever Meet the Author Festival on Sunday, September 15th. This event featured thirty local authors of various genres and backgrounds.
“We’ve had a lot of authors reach out to us about wanting to do events… and sometimes it’s hard to get a lot of people to come to individual author events, especially small, self-published authors,” event coordinator Alicia Chapman said. “The library wanted to have an opportunity to promote these authors, so we figured doing a big festival where we have thirty authors in the room on one day would be a great way to pull in more people.”
One such author who was featured at the festival was Jana Schott. She was showcasing a book titled The Night Before Christmas, Soldier Style. This story about Santa in a warzone was inspired by her son being stationed overseas.
Another notable author was Eugene M. Gagliano, Wyoming Poet Laureate Emeritus. He has won several awards for his work. The Wyoming Historical Society awarded him Best Fiction in 2024 for his book The Ice Cave Mystery. Before his writing career, Gagliano was an elementary school teacher for 34 years. He uses his experience as a teacher to help fuel exciting ideas for his children-centric stories.
When it came to contacting potential authors to showcase, Chapman said, “We had contact information [for some people] since they reached out to us. I also went to Wyoming Writers and tried to reach out to a bunch of writers.”
The community seemed to react well to the event, with the meeting room full of people engaging with the authors about their work and backgrounds. The public was able to purchase books from each table, and some authors were provided exclusive sneak peeks at unpublished work that will be released soon.
“The goal is to do this every year, to see where it grows organically,” Chapman said. “[We could] potentially look at different venues to do it at and maybe add on a writers workshop or have a spot for authors to do readings.”
