Contributed by Sharon Aubrey
This year will be the second year Alaskan authors & illustrators will be joining together to bring a unique booth to the State Fair in Palmer promoting books published or authored by Alaskans. While Alaskana is our most famous genre, many of our authors write in a variety of other areas too like science-fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, impossible crime, poetry, biography, adventure, and children’s books. The plethora of books from your fellow Alaskans is amazing.
Last year, our booth was primarily sponsored by Relevant Publishers LLC, Alaska Magazine, Best Beginnings and The People’s Paper and 34 Alaskan authors. We united as a coop concept to bring the booth into reality, but there were some unique and unexpected challenges for our first Fair. The initial obstacle was obtaining a booth, which thanks to Fair staff connecting outgoing booth owners with new booth seekers; we were able to purchase a used booth in the Spring. Unfortunately, we were unaware the booth support framing had dry-rotted in the storage lot at some point. Upon moving the booth into place, it almost tipped over. The intensity of the moment to secure the building to protect it from loss and from damaging surrounding booths was quite an adrenaline rush and not in the good way. It took almost twelve hours, working late into the night to reframe and support the front wall while the building was simultaneously tied off to my pick-up truck for support. Thankfully, the end result was a fairly straight building from the front. However, if one looked closely down the 30-foot line between the booths, our structure still had a slight lean to it that could not be adjusted.
This unexpected booth event caused us to be lovingly nicknamed the “Tipsy Book Nook” by other vendors and Fair staff, which brought great comical relief to the whole booth leaning affair. It still brings a smile to my heart when I look back now too. After the Fair, we knew it would be impossible to move or preserve the structure intact. As we began to dismantle it, we discovered not only were the major support beams dry rotted, but there were no headers for the doors and no adjoining sill plates for the walls. In laymen’s terms, there was nothing holding opposite walls together except 2 nails in each corner. It’s still a mystery how that building moved back and forth into the Fair storage lot successfully for so many years without falling apart before us. It’s probably one of the 7 the Wonders of the Construction World.
The booth building came down rather quickly, as you can image, having limited solid construction to it. Many of the materials we hoped to salvage to reconstruct another booth for 2020 were not able to be recycled. However, this year, we are hoping to partner with other businesses, community members, readers and authors to reconstruct a safe and secure booth for many years to come. In honor of our nickname, we are calling our Fair booth, “Alaska’s Book Nook,” hopefully leaving out the “tipsy” part this year.
The Alaska Historical Publication Association, a local 501c3, is joining with us to help provide a tax-deductible way for partners to donate resources to building a new book booth for our community at the State Fair. We would deeply appreciate your support of this project be it by donating new or recycled construction materials, expertise in booth design or construction, or in providing funds to purchase construction materials. Our goal is to raise $5,000 by June to allow time for construction before August. Any help you can give toward this goal is welcomed and appreciated greatly. For more information on how to donate to our book booth project, please contact Sharon Aubrey at 907-775-4516 or visit https://www.alaskanbooks.com/donate-to-the-booth-building.html
