Every year, the Southwest Florida Reading Festival unites diverse groups of people that share a love of reading and writing. Award-winning authors, helpful volunteers, and entire families all travel to the Fort Myers Regional Library. This year the festival celebrated its 25th year anniversary, which took place on March 2nd, 2024 from 10 AM to 4 PM.

Approximately 5,000 to 7,000 people attended the festival this year, which is a substantial increase from previous years. A lot of effort is put into the festival, as it takes an entire year to plan. Additionally, it relies on the help of over 60 library staff members and 80 volunteers. 

Junior Hannah Green is a Lee County Library volunteer and was at the festival passing out books to teens and children.

“I like talking to people about books and telling people what are my favorite books and recommending books to people,” said Green. “[The reading festival] offers a lot of the kind of programs and opportunities present through the Lee County Library System. So I feel that’s really important, it just gives people the opportunity to read more and access different organizations and things through the library.”

Throughout the day visitors were kept entertained with a multitude of activities for everyone to enjoy, regardless of age. There were two adult and youth stages for “author spotlights” as well as storytelling and more, with the SWFL Reading Festival App available to download with the full schedule. Guests had the opportunity to get up to three books signed by their favorite authors like Mary Kay Andrews and Michael Buckley. 

“I just talked to one of our attendees the other day and he says he’s from New Jersey, and he flies in every year just to time his vacation for our festival,” said Melissa Baker, the manager of programming and community outreach for the Lee County Library System and the Festival Coordinator. “I’ve talked to attendees who have moved away to like North Carolina, and they still come back for the festival every year. You hear stories about people like that and it becomes a tradition so they come back year after year.”

A keynote feature of the reading festival is that every child and teen is guaranteed a free book. Even during the virtual festival in 2020, each child was still able to receive a book. This year, the youth service coordinator was responsible for selecting over 1,000 books through Scholastic and Suncoast Union provided the free books.

“It’s a tradition that started with the very first reading festival,’ said Baker. “So in 2000, when they first hosted the festival, every child got a free book and back then it was every teen gets a zine. But a couple of years into it, they started getting books too.”

In honor of their 25th anniversary, they hired Stiltwalker to do free balloon art for the public. There were also different tents of crafts for teens and children, as well as a plethora of vendor and sponsor tents such as Jason’s Deli, Suncoast Credit Union, The Friends of the Cape Coral Library, and The Literacy Coalition of SWFL. 

The Friends of the Cape Coral Library is a nonprofit organization that supports the Lee County Library system through financial contributions such as enhancements to the library experience. The Friends were a Pulitzer Prize sponsor for the festival and have been part of the sponsor list for 18 years. The organization pays to print library books, chairs for the children’s library, magazines that display upcoming books, and interactive wall displays. 

In 2022 The Friends of the Cape Coral Library celebrated their 50th anniversary. They’re also hosting the 18th Annual Children’s Environmental Art Contest whose theme for this year is, “Let’s Save the Smalltooth Sawfish!.” Members of the nonprofit help regulate the Cape Coral Library art gallery. 

“I find artists all year round,” explained Monica Rahman, Art Gallery chair and past president. “[Paintings] usually are in the gallery for about two months. [Right now] I have a watercolor artist, we found room for 36 paintings to hang on the gallery walls. And then we have three LED display cases where we have a fused glass artist.”

Other organizations, like the Purple Group, were at the Festival as a petitioner. The Purple Group is a nonpartisan, pro-teacher advocacy group dedicated to speaking out against book banning as well as any anti-teacher policies in school board meetings and other events. 

“Public libraries are one of the greatest ideas in the history of mankind,” said Ray Clayson. Clayson has been a member of the Purple Group for a few months and was a teacher at Cape High for 27 years before retiring in 2012. 

“It’s just awful to think about, but if they can go to after-school libraries, public libraries are next. We’re trying as teachers to encourage critical thinking skills, we’re trying to give students different perspectives and reading encourages critical thinking. So nothing’s more important than reading and discouraging reading is awful in my opinion.”

The festival activities began the day before with “an evening with the authors” which gave people the opportunity to buy a ticket and spend a night with the panelist of authors. 

“We’ve always had that dinner,” said Baker. “But I was really excited this year that we got to have that at the Burroughs home and gardens, which was on the river. And it was a little more formal than it usually is. It’s our silver anniversary so we had lots of silver decorations and that was a special way to commemorate the anniversary.”

Not only does the reading festival help spread the love for reading, it also encourages students to write through the Aspiring Author’s Contest, which is open to all Lee County students. The Aspiring Author’s Contest has several categories that are open for submissions and the winners are recognized on stage at the reading festival. Teachers throughout Lee County judge the submissions in January.  

“With as much strenuous work our IB students and our honors students in particular have to do, creativity, sometimes it falls on the back burner,” said English teacher Michelle Williams. “So it’s cool that there’s still some students out there that are writing for fun.”

Two Cape High Students won awards for their writing submission. Freshman Loirena Vazquez received 3rd place for her fiction piece and freshman Liana Vargas won 1st place for her poetry piece.

Vazquez originally didn’t know about the contest until her English teacher let her know about the competition one week before but she wasn’t preparing to submit an entry. 

“At that point, I wasn’t going to submit anything, since I had very little time, but I had already said yes to my teacher, so, I ended up writing it at night, and I really thought I wasn’t going to win at all… but it impressively won the third place,” said Vazquez.

Ultimately the Southwest Florida Reading Festival gives the entire community an opportunity to come together and celebrate reading, literacy, and books. 

“So my feeling is reading, especially fiction transports you to another time in place,” said Rahman. “And it increases sympathy and empathy for other people because you read about people from different worlds. And that’s also important, especially in this day and age, people need to find some brotherly love.”