My Visit to the Grayslake Author Festival
I’m grateful to be able to say I’ve experienced author events both as the author and as a festival-goer. Both are thrilling! There’s a particular kind of tired that comes after a good author event—not the flat, drained kind, but the full kind. The kind where your feet hurt and your voice is a little hoarse from talking, and somehow you still want to keep going.
That was Grayslake Author Fest for me.
I put together a short video recap, which is up on YouTube now, but I wanted to write about it here too, because some things don’t fully fit into a few minutes of footage.
Days like this remind me that this whole project—the book, the writing, the way I keep trying to talk honestly about Ken and grief and what comes after—was never meant to live only on the page. It was meant to end up in places like that one, handed across a table, signed with a Sharpie, carried home in someone’s bag along with whatever they’re carrying that I’ll never fully know about.
If you want the full visual of the day, the YouTube video has it. I highly recommend going to these events if you’re a reader or a writer—or you’re just someone who loves supporting local, independent artistst!
Onward.
Ron Stempkowski is the author of The Luck We Carry: Love, Loss, and the Stories That Shape Us, a memoir-in-essays about learning to move with grief instead of moving on. If this story resonated, you can grab a signed copy—complete with a handwritten note—at ronstempkowski.com, or get your copy wherever books are sold. And if you'd like more stories like this one, join the journey and get them straight in your inbox.
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