The best literary festival in recent memory is calling it quits.
The best literary festival in recent memory is calling it quits. Cassandra Bell

I'm sad to report that after 5 years of thoughtfully curating readings in celebration of independent literature, APRIL Festival is closing up shop.

From the festival's director of marketing, Frances Chiem:

After spending the last half-decade as arts organizers, we feel we need to spend more time on our own creative work and pay more attention to our endlessly patient families.

We also feel that this is an ideal time to step away because so many other orgs and presses and authors and curators have stepped up to elevate independent literature in Seattle. It's a more robust community than when we started. We are so thrilled to see that energy amplified by people smarter than we are.

(L-R) Rachel Shields, Rebecca Zweig, cofounder Willie Fitzgerald, cofounder Tara Atkinson, Frances Chiem, and Sarah Baker.
(L-R) Rachel Shields, Rebecca Zweig, cofounder Willie Fitzgerald, cofounder Tara Atkinson, Frances Chiem, and Sarah Baker. Sunita Martini

APRIL was so good at what they did that this paper nominated the festival for a 2013 Stranger Genius Award in Literature, marking the first time we'd ever nominated a festival for the award.

Cofounders Tara Atkinson (L) and Willie Fitzgerald (R) in the early days.
Cofounders Tara Atkinson (L) and Willie Fitzgerald (R) in the early days. Kelly O

I'm on vacation right now, but if I had enough time, I would list the hundred special literary moments that APRIL helped bring into being. Like that time Mark Leidner blew everyone away in Sierra Stinson's cramped apartment for Vignettes with his long and hilarious poems. Or that time Jenny Zhang read amazing poems on a table beside a lizard eating peaches in a glass case at Indian Summer. Or that time Ed Skoog read a poem near a giant red gas tank in a Capitol Hill parking garage and then promised never to publish that poem. Or that time Sarah Galvin read poems onstage at the Crescent and told a vocal detractor to fuck off. Or that time when Jac Jemc read a visceral/surreal-feeling story at Chop Suey whose images I remember but whose narrative I forget. Or all those hungover mornings at the Book Expo. Those too-brief and incomplete flashes will have to suffice for now.

There will be one more super-condensed APRIL Festival on April 1st. (The festival has been held, explicably but confusingly, during the last week of March every year, so the fact that they're doing it on April Fool's Day of their final year is a funny little inside joke for those who have attended in the past.) Chiem says the event will take place under an actual circus tent, and that they plan to have "an all star Poet, Playwright, Novelist and Drag Queen competition; another literary brunch; books for sale; featured local authors and more." This is not to be missed.

APRIL introduced Seattle to a lot of brilliant independent writers from all over the country, and also championed the work of local writers who have gone on to find success. Hopefully the end of this era will inspire a new one.