>>My name is Kalela Williams, and I'm the Director of Virginia Humanities, Virginia Center for the Book.

How would I describe myself?

I would say I'm a writer.

I have been writing for a long time.

My debut novel is coming out in the fall of 2024, and it's called "Tangleroot."

I'm also a reader.

I'm a history enthusiast.

I love history.

I even do historical interpretation or at least I used to.

I'm a daughter, I'm a sister, I'm an auntie, a partner, I'm a cat mama.

I've got three cats.

(Kalela laughing) I was introduced to libraries as a child and introduced to used bookstores, and that's what really got me hooked on books.

So Virginia Humanities is the State's Humanities Council, and Virginia, the Virginia Center for the Book is a department within Virginia Humanities, and there's many other departments.

I have great coworkers in folk life and in grants, in education and community initiatives, "With Good Reason," a radio show, Encyclopedia of Virginia, I could go on and on.

And the Virginia Center for the Book as one of the departments in Virginia Humanities is, there's a book art studio and a book arts program.

And so that encompasses an actual print studio, an art studio that focuses on book arts.

And then we also do year-round literary programs such as author readings.

And of course, we're very well known for the Virginia Festival of the Book, which happens every year in March.

Books are a way to talk to people.

Books are ideas.

They're thoughts.

They're written down on a page.

People coming together to talk about these ideas and these concepts and how they relate to us as individual people, that's what excites me about the Virginia Festival of the Book.

Now there's some things, you know, there are some perks like meeting famous authors that's, and I fan girl like anybody else.

Really, what's exciting to me about the festival is the way that it allows me to think bigger and think broader and think more deeply and think all, more imaginatively.

It's just really thrilling.

(upbeat music)