Staff
Organizers of the Plum Creek Literacy Festival announced they have made the difficult decision to cancel the Children’s Day and Adult Conference scheduled for Friday and Saturday at Concordia University.
Here is the full statement:
We are saddened to announce that we had to make the difficult decision to cancel the Plum Creek Literacy Festival Children’s Day and Adult Conference, taking place on campus Friday and Saturday, respectively. The festival is also not sending authors to local schools this week.
In recent days, we have experienced the withdrawal of many authors and illustrators from the festival. While we respect the decision they have made, the number of withdrawals would not allow us to provide the quality of events we have offered in the past.
An author whose book was not included in the book sale list came to an inaccurate conclusion that it was excluded for discriminatory reasons, which was not the case. As a general practice, books selected for the catalog listed on the website are chosen to be consistent with the age group to which authors are scheduled to speak. In this case, the author was going to speak with middle-grade students.
Therefore, the book, rated for ages 13-18 by the book’s publisher, was deemed not age-appropriate for the audience and was not included in the pre-sale list, though we had planned to provide it for sale at the adult conference. Unfortunately, the author’s conclusion eventually led to additional authors cancelling their engagements.
The mission of Plum Creek has always been to further literacy and celebrate the creative arts, especially by learning through stories and realities of diverse people and perspectives. We continue to strive for Plum Creek to be a community that embraces learning across differences, recognizing the importance of literacy and its impact on students of all ages.
