Press release from Grateful Steps:
The Eighth Asheville Bookfest Event, hosted by Grateful Steps, is scheduled for Saturday, December 2, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium Banquet Hall. The banquet hall is adjacent to the Asheville Civic Center, which also be hosting an arts and crafts show the same day. But Grateful Steps executive director, Micki Cabaniss Eustler, hopes the Bookfest will benefit from “walk-in” traffic generated by the arts and crafts event.
“We will have best signage ever, including our sandwich board visible to the hundreds of attendees going in and out of the civic center for the craft show next door,” Eustler said. “We will have a speaker’s program running in the room adjacent to the banquet hall, and we are planning five, one-hour, topic-related sessions. These may be panel discussions with children’s authors, prevention-of-childhood-sexual-abuse authors (moderated by Barbara Duncan), prevention of bullying authors, humor-book authors, and self-discovery authors. We are being blessed with good signage and marketing. I hope we can grow at this location.”
The Asheville Bookfest offers WNC publishers’ and self-published authors the opportunity to display and sell their publications in a public venue. Authors keep all their proceeds from book sales at the event.
Grateful Steps was formed in 2004 with a mission to “help people enrich their lives through publishing.” In addition to publication of dozens of titles by local and regional authors, the nonprofit hosts an interfaith ministry service characterized by monthly discussions led by published authors of all faiths.
All area publishers have participated in the prior seven annual Bookfests and this year, once again, many WNC publishers and self-published authors will be vendors. New titles released this year by Grateful Steps include: Who’s Got Your Back?, by Barbara Duncan; Bent 31 Poems, by Teresa Price; Drunks, Monks and Mental Illness, by Barbara Willis Kimbrell, Sacred Connections Horsemanship: Empowering Horse and Rider through Chakra Energy, by Catherine Hunter; and The Nog Story: A Tale about the Origin of Eggnog, by Gail C. Heller. Popular past titles include This, That and the Third, by Abigail Hickman; and Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle, by former Asheville Citizen-TImes columnist Susan Reinhardt.
Admission to the Bookfest is free, and Eustler hopes shoppers will take advantage of the opportunity to shop for books as well as arts and crafts at the Asheville Civic Center. “It’s a perfect date for Christmas shoppers.”
Grateful Steps Foundation is located at Crest Mountain, 30 Ben Lippen School Road, Suite 107, Asheville, NC 28806. For more information, call 828-277-0998, or visit the web site at: www.gratefulsteps.org.
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