Unbound 2021 - a new (online) chapter! (Plus CoMoGives)
Hello. Remember us? It's been a while.
We have some exciting news about next year's Unbound Book Festival to share with you. We also have a favor to ask.
We’ve all suffered our share of disappointments and hardships over the past nine months. For us, the cancelation of the 2020 Unbound Book Festival was one of the toughest. It was heartbreaking to watch all the hard work and passion that had gone into the 2020 event come to naught. Our amazing group of volunteers took some time to regroup, and now we're back, and excited for the 2021 event – which will look very different from previous years.
First of all, the whole festival will be online. While this isn’t what anyone would wish for, we're excited at the opportunities that the virtual format offers. (Most importantly, of course, it will keep everyone safe.) Secondly, rather than cramming everything into a single weekend, we’ll be offering regular programming every week from mid-January onward. (What this means is that you won't have to make any difficult choices about which event to attend. You'll be able to watch them all. Silver linings, people.) The festival will culminate with our keynote event on April 23, featuring last year’s planned guests, Pulitzer Prize winners Tracy K. Smith and Jericho Brown.
We’ll be offering the usual eclectic mix of brilliant poets, scintillating panels, and engaging author conversations. And since 2021 is the Missouri bicentennial, we’ll be celebrating writing from and about this great state of ours. We are deep into the planning of all this - wrangling authors remotely is, it turns out, no easier than doing it in person - and as soon as we have the program finalized we'll share it with you. (You can also check our website for updates.) But you might want to keep Tuesday and Thursday evenings free.
We'll also be putting on a full "Authors in the Schools" program this year, for all grades from Kindergarten through 12th Grade - and, since all the events will be virtual, we're hoping that many more students will be able to benefit from the experience.
As always, every Unbound event will be completely free to attend. And here's where the favor comes in.
Without the revenue from ticket sales, and with sponsorship opportunities greatly reduced for this year, we are relying more heavily than ever on your support to help us finance the festival and pay the honorariums of the authors and poets who will be attending Unbound. You probably know that we are 100% volunteer-run - nobody is paid a dime - but there are still many expenses to be met. Today marks the start of CoMoGives, which is by far and away our biggest fund-raising event of the year – especially in 2020, when we have not been able to gather in person.
CoMoGives, as you probably know, is the online charitable giving bonanza organized by the good people at the Community Foundation of Central Missouri. It is a wonderfully simple and easy way for people to give online to their favorite local charities. All you need is a credit card, an internet connection, and a couple of minutes.
So may we ask a small favor, on behalf of everyone who volunteers for Unbound? We would all be so grateful if you would be kind enough to visit our giving page at CoMoGives and make a donation to help us out. Every little bit helps, and we would be tremendously grateful.
Thank you so much, and we'll see you online next year!
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