Each fall, the Minnesota State Fairgrounds trade pronto pups for paperbacks: the Twin Cities Book Festival, presented by the literary organization Rain Taxi since 2001, is the state’s biggest celebration of the written word — a free, one-day feast of authors, publishers and book people.
More than 100 exhibitors fill the Progress Center — university presses, indie publishers, booksellers and literary nonprofits — while stages rotate readings and conversations from morning to night: novelists, poets, graphic artists, kids’ authors and the occasional rock-star memoirist. The used book sale alone (thousands of titles) is a contact sport for collectors.
In a metro that reads as hard as Minneapolis–St. Paul, the Book Festival is the annual family reunion — come leave with a tote bag heavier than your intentions.
