This Spring Term’s biannual Abbot Book Festival, centering the theme “Anatomy of a Book,” featured publishing panels, zine workshops, free books, student performances, and activities. Hosted by the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library (OWHL) and its Student Advisory Committee, and with generous funding from the Abbot Grant, the festival aimed to bring the Andover community together to explore the many ways literature is created, shared and experienced.
Anastasia Collins, Instructional Librarian and Geographer at Large, explained that the Abbot Book Festival was envisioned as an opportunity to bring the campus community together for the purpose of celebrating reading and access to literature, a space librarians felt was previously missing on campus. According to Collins, the idea for the festival emerged several years ago when they and Instructional Librarian M. Wallis discovered the existence of the Abbot Academy Grants.
“Three years ago, M. Wallis and I were just sitting. We were new to [Andover], and we had just learned that Abbot Academy Grants existed, and were not only open to students, though also members of faculty. So we began to wonder if there’s ever been a book festival here. There’s a lot of things [Andover] is known for, but there’s also just some things that have never really happened here…The [Abbot Book Festival] is a little mini little version of the Boston Book Festival, an opportunity to just come together and celebrate reading and access,” said Collins.
Wallis highlighted the significance of the event as a space for students to step outside their academic lives and explore their creative identities. They noted that the festival offered students a chance to share their work while discovering new interests in areas like publishing.
“It’s a really unique time for folks to come together and really get away from curriculum and think about other aspects of reading, writing, and creating. There are a ton of really creative people on this campus, including one student, Kristen Ma [’27], who’s going to be talking about her poetry collection, which she published a couple months ago. [It’s] an opportunity for people to engage in the way of telling other people what they’ve done, and also for people to come in and find out new things that they’re interested in around bookmaking, maybe they’ve thought about publishing. It creates a little network of opportunities,” said Wallis.
Collins noted that community can be built through shared experiences of literature, and emphasized the Abbot Book Festival’s accessibility.
“You don’t need to necessarily consider yourself a big reader. It is just the idea that books are a way for people to share ideas, reading them and engaging with them however you want. You can hate a book. That’s totally fine. Write your opinions on it, engage and talk and create more things in response to things being created, is the idea,” said Collins.
Ellah Kotlarsky ’27, a member of the OWHL Student Advisory Board, expressed her hope that the festival would help foster a culture of reading outside of academic work. Conversations surrounding the challenges and rewards of publishing and writing further placed an emphasis on the importance of student engagement with literature.
“We talked about the goods and bads of publishing in the panel and ups and downs of being a writer at a place like Andover where it’s so busy. But it’s really important to do things like the Abbot Book Festival, and focusing on the positives and how by being at Andover, books, they kind of connect us,” said Kotlarsky.
Wallis expressed hope that the festival would leave students with an inspiration to engage with literature in any way that suits them.
“I hope students will be inspired in some way, to create, however that might look, and to know that there’s new opportunities out there. Maybe they have new ideas about things that they’re already doing. Maybe they join a new club based on the clubs that are tabled in at the festival,” said Wallis.
Editors note: Kristian Ma is a news editor for The Phillipian
