Avid readers and authors gathered in Lexington over the weekend to celebrate and share their love of literature at the 42nd Annual Kentucky Book Festival.

At Joseph Beth Booksellers, the event gave readers a chance to connect one on one with well-known and upcoming Kentucky authors.

This is the longest running literary event in Kentucky.

This is its 42nd edition.

We have community of writers, community of readers, community around the young readers and children.

Community makes everything more important in our book.

It's not just a book of bookish connections.

One of our themes, one of the slogans is something for everyone.

No matter what you read, no matter what you like, you will be able to find it at the Kentucky Book Festival.

We have 150 excellent writers and they are all accomplished writers in those hours.

Also, our writers really like each other and they know each other quite well.

And Frank Walker, one of our authors, say it's like family reunion.

Because that to me is the highlight of the fall.

I mean, it's not really fall until we have a chance to come into this space and and buy books and share books.

For me, it's a family reunion.

I see my favorite authors.

One of the things that that makes it amazing is that it is the one time people can really see evidence that literature is a big deal in Kentucky.

I really appreciate having a chance to contribute to diversity and help tell the story, the true story of Kentucky and Broadway, especially in the face of images that are trying to to ban books, to control a very small, narrow conservative idea of what children should know and learn about.

I think free speech is important, and sometimes if you ban a book, you only give us more power because you highlight that.

So I think that banning books backfires.

If they're successful, then my work as an artist disappears and I and all of my fellow writers of color who don't fit that traditional narrow stereotype will be left out of the story with an incomplete story.

So this festival helps build that curriculum.

The lineup at this year's event also included Kentucky poet Lawrence and New York Times best selling authors Silas House and Crystal Wilkinson.