The Louisiana Book Festival will be back downtown this weekend after being cancelled last year due to budget cuts. The event features more than 225 authors and panelists presenting and discussing their latest works.

Learn more about the event here. 

WRKF's Tegan Wendland had a conversation with Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne about his plans for the festival's future and funding for arts in the state.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW 

www.lsureveille.com 2009 Louisiana Book Festival

WENDLAND: Can you start out by giving us some of the highlights of this year's festival?

DARDENNE: Well, the Book Festival is coming back after a one-year hiatus, which is the really good news - it was not held last year due to budget cuts and we felt it important to bring it back, so it's back with over 200 participants from all over the south and all over the nation. We're anticipating a great crowd, the weather will be beautiful, it's both indoors at the state capitol and outside in tents all across the capitol area.

WENDLAND: And why did you feel it was so important to bring the festival back?

DARDENNE: Louisiana has such a rich literary history and this is one of the biggest and

Saiward Pharr/WRKF La. Lt. Governor, Jay Dardenne

best and most popular book festivals, literally in the country. And I felt it was critical for Louisiana to celebrate its literary history and to give us the opportunity to recognize and thank the many Louisiana authors who have created works of literature for Louisiana citizens to enjoy and this a celebration of that.

WENDLAND: What is your office's involvement this year now that you're not contributing financially to the event?

DARDENNE: Well, we are contributing financially to some extent. We're very fortunate that we had a great legacy from Sally Farrell, who was the second State Librarian, who left some money to the library to further the work of the state library and our current library and Rebecca Hamilton has done a tremendous job in that role, but also in being a real advocate for this festival. So it's a combination of some limited resources from the state and the generosity that Sally left that have made the resurrection of the book festival this year possible.

WENDLAND: I had read back in February in the Times-Picayune that the state would have been expected to contribute about $90,000 to the event but was instead relying on private donations. Are you saying that the library donation is making up part of that?

DARDENNE: Absolutely. The legacy from Sally is making up the vast part of that. I mean, there's a lot of work that's been put in by our library staff, our state library staff, as well as hundreds of volunteers that have made this event possible - but it's back, primarily, because of the money that Sally left.

WENDLAND: What are you going to do in order to get your office more funding to promote the arts in the future, if this is so important?

DARDENNE: You know, we're responsible for promoting the arts in Louisiana, the tourism program, the state library system, the state park system and the state museum system. Each of those areas get specific line items in the state budget, each of those areas has been cut dramatically, given the budget problems that we're having right now and we're going to continue to be advocates in each those areas, even when the legislature convenes next year and divvies up the pie, and we're hopeful that funding will be restored for each of these areas, but we're doing more with less, just as we've talked about over the course of the year. Our numbers are down considerably but we're trying to do even more with less money.

WENDLAND: Can you speak at all to how you're going to lobby that support for the arts?

DARDENNE: Well, it's what we've done last year, we go to the legislature and the arts advocates go to the legislature and try to convince them of the importance of this aspect of Louisiana - this is the thing that makes Louisiana unlike any other state in the country, it's our rich cultural diversity, our artistic legacy and it's something that we should celebrate, we deliver that message to the Governor, we deliver it to policy makers, we deliver it to the legislature. You know, next year's the bicentennial of statehood, so we're going to have a huge celebration across the state.

WENDLAND: How much money is the state providing for the bicentennial event next year?

DARDENNE: None. There's literally no money in the state budget for the bicentennial, the commission, headed by General Russel Honore, has raised a considerable amount of money in the private sector - we're hoping to supplement that with some funds from BP that the state received after the spill last year. We've already put a significant amount of money towards the bicentennial from the amount allocated to our office - the Office of Tourism - and we'll probably commit some more before then, when the dust settles in 2012.