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The Twin Cities Book Festival is Minnesota's largest gathering of readers and one of the region's premier art events. It also might be the best-kept secret in the country.
Presented annually by the literary organization Rain Taxi, the Twin Cities Book Festival is having its 24th annual celebration of books this year. The free one-day festival will be Saturday, Oct. 19, at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, where it's held every fall.
The book festival brings together nationally known writers, local literary heroes, publishers, magazines, booksellers, and more to celebrate our region’s vibrant literary culture. The TCBF regularly attracts nearly 7,000 people to enjoy a bustling exhibit hall, author readings and talks, and other literary fun for adults and children.
The festival's audience is diverse and tends to be college-educated, independent-minded, and active in civic life. They strongly value the arts and the businesses that support them. We invite you to reap the benefits of interacting with this culturally engaged group.
I am a board member of Rain Taxi, and I have seen the value of the organization and book festival firsthand.
Rain Taxi presents the annual Twin Cities Book Festival free of charge, but we need your help. You can support our annual Twin Cities Book Festival gathering and the nonprofit that organizes it by making a one-time donation or becoming a Rain Taxi member.
Suggested donations are $25, $50, or $100.
A $25 gift allows us to offer free admission to the festival, helps us run our other literary engagement projects throughout the year, including the Twin Cities Literary Calendar and the Twin Cities Independent Bookstore Passport, and makes you a member of Rain Taxi. As a member, you’ll get print issues of the award-winning quarterly magazine Rain Taxi Review of Books delivered to your door.
A $50 gift allows Rain Taxi to include emerging authors in TCBF events, expands children’s and local author programming at the festival, and makes you a member of Rain Taxi, as described above.
A $100 gift gets you all of the above, plus offsets rising venue costs, expands the possibilities for future festivals, and makes you an Editor’s Circle member of Rain Taxi. As an Editor's Circle member, you’ll get VIP benefits in addition to print issues of Rain Taxi Review of Books.
Rain Taxi also offers sponsorship packages for business and community organizations. Sponsorships range from $1,000 to $10,000, and Rain Taxi is happy to customize packages based on your organization’s particular goals and interests.
Sponsorship benefits can include:
You can let Rain Taxi know what financial level of support is right for you, and we can tailor a plan that suits your needs. Contact TCBF director Eric Lorberer at bookfest@raintaxi.com to set up a call.
Book lovers age 16 and older can volunteer at the festival as well. Volunteers help run our used book and record sale, stage events and author appearances, children’s events and activities, and more. It’s a fun, fast-paced, rewarding way to get a look behind the scenes of the year’s biggest book day and to be an essential part of making it happen.
Now in its 29th year, Rain Taxi has been championing diverse voices in literature and publishing a quarterly magazine of book reviews since 1996. Led by Lorberer, the Rain Taxi editor and executive director, and art director Kelly Everding, this print journal is not your average look at fiction, nonfiction, poetry and comics. It produces 40-50 award-winning pages of adventurous literature every four months and is now distributed in 150 locations nationwide.
But Rain Taxi is much more than just a magazine. Rain Taxi also organizes the Rain Taxi Reading Series and publishes original creative works via chapbooks and broadsides, and, as a service to the local community, maintains the Twin Cities Literary Calendar with a list of literary events in our region.
In all its programs, Rain Taxi is committed to artistic diversity, cultural relevance, and widespread access. They exist for readers, writers, publishers, booksellers, educators, and kindred spirits of all shapes and sizes. The common bond is a desire to keep books flourishing.
Now more than ever, we need the arts and everything they bring to society. The literary arts help people from different cultures connect and understand each other through stories. Books and writing can be a tool for social change. Books are good for your health, help you see life's beauty, and can offer therapeutic relief.
On top of all that, books can provide an economic boost, as nonprofit arts and culture organizations in the United States contribute an estimated $60 billion to the national economy each year.
It takes money to preserve the arts. You can play a part. Start today.
Contact Rain Taxi executive director Eric Lorberer at bookfest@raintaxi.com to sponsor the Twin Cities Book Festival or make a donation at bit.ly/twincitiesbooksupport.
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