T’Naus Nieto
The Chronicle-News

Higher attendance, expanded forms of literature, renowned writers

Trinidad’s own sixth annual official literary festival, held on the weekend of Sept. 19 through Sept. 22, saw a much higher attendance compared to previous events, indicating a bright future for Virginia Jimenez, as her passion for literature and sharing it with as many people as possible could make the festival even more prominent in the future.  

For the past six years, Corazón de Trinidad Creative District has hosted its literary festival, “GET LIT! Ignite Your Literary Soul,” where the organization brings in a group of talented and professional writers to lead writing workshops, express their passion for literature and share their creative writing projects with others.   

The festival included open mics, all-level workshops, free workshops at the local schools, and a fundraising dinner with featured presentations and a silent auction.

The Corazón de Trinidad Creative District aims to support local creative industries. It also offers a literary open mic every second Saturday, free to the public. 

In an interview with The Chronicle-News, treasurer of the Corazón de Trinidad Creative District, Virginia Jimenez expressed her excitement about the growing attendance. She plans to continue building on the momentum of the event and the decisions she and her committee made to rebrand and grow.

“I’m really pleased and inspired by how well the event went this year,” Jimenez said. “This had to be our best year yet.. I’m grateful for all the people who attended and showed their support. I believe we’re building a community, and we’re also connecting with our greater state community too… One of our (the creative district’s) goals is to help the creative industries in our community have better economic opportunities.”   

Jimenez noted the vast improvement in attendance this year. Class attendance added up to about 30 people or more, with three classes going on at once. Comparatively, last year, they only had 10 people across three classes.

“I thought this year was awesome,” she said. “This year (we) decided to make the Friday evening event of the literary festival our annual fundraiser. So that was much bigger, easily twice the size of our dinner last year… We got over $9K in silent auction donations from the community… We had presentations from some of the writers and some musicians as well. That, by itself, was great. We added a pop-up bookshop throughout the weekend. So, all the writers at the festival teaching also had their books in that shop. We also had a handful of writers from Colorado and local writers as well… Overall, this year was well attended compared to last year.” 

The improvements for the festival had been a process, according to Jimenez, and their decisions could have led to the greater turn out in their latest outing.

“Last year, we rebranded,” she said. “This year, we sort of added to that brand. We found a logo we liked that we might keep for a while.” 

The committee is a board of local writers, a subset of the Corazón de Trinidad Creative District. Last year, they also decided to expand what they offered for the festival, allowing creative writers of all forms to join the festival outside of poets. Some of the formats included popular fiction genres such as sci-fi and fantasy, non-fiction, journalism, poetry, historical fiction, and even songwriting. 

“In past years, it’s been specifically poetry. Last year, we branched out,” Jimenez said. “We brought writers from many formats to teach workshops… Sci-fi and fantasy are genres a lot of people like. There’s a lot of different things I want to bring.” 

Jimenez said, “That committee is in charge of putting on the literary events that we do. One of them is a literary open mic with a featured reader every second Saturday.” 

Jimenez noted what led to the decision to expand. When the committee discussed the topic, she said, “Listen, I love poetry as much as the next person. But when people hear the word poetry, they’re terrified. It feels like it’s inaccessible because it’s the finer art of literature for some people, and it’s hard to get into.” 

She said, “ I was able to convince the rest of our literary committee that we could expand this to more than just poetry. And in many ways, it’s less scary for students to come.” 

Jimenez spoke about her ambition to continue growing the literary festival to such an extent that it would become a calendar-marked destination event for readers, writers, and those enthusiastic about literature to travel to Trinidad and experience what professionals have to offer, whether it’s learning or enjoying the craft. “I do think the literary festival will be something people will come to Trinidad for,” she said.   

Jimenez noted prominent featured writers at the festival, such as Wendy Videlock, who had been featured in the New York Times magazine and won numerous literary awards, Azure Arther, Trinidad’s own, and Tom Nordgren, who gave a class on novel writing and playwriting.  She also referenced Stace Johnson, who provided songwriting workshops for middle school students at the festival. “They loved it,” Jimenez said. “Even the principal told me, ‘Oh, the kids loved this. It was so great,” and I’m like, ‘yes, that’s what I want.’” 

She noted a time when she was an educator at Holy Trinity, and the school brought in writers. “That was really cool, and the kids liked it.”  

“I’m personally, as an educator, passionate about teaching people and making opportunities accessible. As a writer, this (the festival) is a great way for people to come together. Writers tend to be somewhat introverted. They can be solitary… It’s an opportunity for our literary community to come together to learn and to share.”