If you are looking for Jack Armitage this weekend at the Tucson Festival of Books, just search for a man beneath an orange cap.
There won’t be many.
Armitage received the cap when he volunteered for Tucson’s first festival in 2009 and is one of the few who have helped stage the event every year since.
“A guy stopped me at the last book festival and asked where he could buy the hat,” Jack said. “I had to tell him ‘nowhere.’ They’re collector’s items now!”
Since Day One of Year One, the festival has been powered by a small army of local volunteers. About 200 work on the event year-round. More than 1,100 come forward to help on festival weekend. Volunteers provide a wide range of tasks, from long-range planning to campus cleanup.
Volunteers recruit the authors, nurture the sponsors and manage the 200 exhibitors who will blanket the university’s East Mall. Volunteers give rides to authors from the airport to their hotels. Volunteers staff the information centers and serve as campus guides. Volunteers manage traffic flow at all 31 author venues across campus.
“It really is Tucson’s Festival of Books,” said Armitage’s wife, Ceil Matson. “So many people are involved, I think all of us feel ownership of it. I think all of us are proud of it.”
Like Jack, Ceil has volunteered at every book fest since 2009. She has an orange cap, too.
“We first started hearing about the festival in 2008, when they were getting ready for the first one in 2009,” Matson said. “From what we were hearing, it sounded like it would be a very big deal in our pretty small town. When they put out a call for volunteers in the newspaper, we thought it would be a fun thing to be part of.”
It was a novel experiment, launching a huge national event without a single paid staff member.
It was a spectacular success.
More than 50,000 people attended the first festival in March of 2009, and it has been growing ever since. By 2019, it was one of the five largest literary events in the United States. It featured 330 presenting authors. Enjoying perfect weather two weeks after a rare local snowstorm, more than 135,000 people flocked to the university over the two-day weekend.
The festival was canceled at the last minute two years ago because of the emerging pandemic. With COVID-19 still part of everyday life, last year’s event was virtual … with authors presentations streamed online.
Tucson’s book festival has come roaring back to life this weekend. Strolling the campus last week to browse the UA Bookstore and see some of the newly erected exhibitor areas, Ceil and Jack laughed about some of their experiences there.
“J.A. Jance asked me to carry her lunch to the table one year,” Jack recalled.
They also began making plans for the weekend ahead. Both are readers. Ceil spent her bookstore time in the fiction stacks. Jack headed to mystery.
“As we can, we both try to drop in on author sessions at the festival,” Ceil said. “It doesn’t even matter who is presenting. They’re all super interesting. Who knows who you might meet?”
At this weekend’s festival, Matson will be monitoring a section of author venues. Her husband will be managing an author book-signing area.
By Monday their feet will hurt but they will feel good about what they have done.
“It’s such an amazing event, such a great thing for Tucson. We feel great just being part of it,” Ceil said.
FOOTNOTES
The festival was entirely volunteer-driven through its first five years. In the summer of 2013, Marcy Euler — now president of the Pima College Foundation — became the event’s first executive director. The executive director today is Melanie Morgan.
Volunteers still do much of the heavy lifting for each year’s festival. There are 16 committees of community volunteers who work year-round on various elements of the event. They are coordinated by a steering committee that is co-chaired by — you guessed it — volunteers.
Steering Committee Co-Chair Lindy Mullinax: “The festival has always attracted amazingly talented, incredibly successful people who love having the latitude to do the things they do best. It’s why they keep coming back I think.”
The Tucson Festival of Books is a 5013 nonprofit organization that raises money for literacy efforts in Tucson. Since its inception, more than $2 million has gone to local organizations dedicated to improving local literacy.
Correspondents Tim Mak of NPR and Jacob Soboroff of NBC were forced to cancel plans to attend the book festival this week. Both are needed at work. They are covering the war in Ukraine.
There are always last-minute adjustments to the festival’s author presentation schedule. With 265 authors, stuff happens. Mullinax said the festival’s website and app are updated daily if you would like to check the status of your favorite authors, tucsonfestivalofbooks.org.
