(Seguin) — You’re invited to cuddle up with a good book this weekend in downtown Seguin. The city of Seguin is preparing to welcome Texas authors, artists and musicians for the first ever Lone Star Festival. The event scheduled for Saturday is being hosted by the Texas Authors Institute of History, a non-profit museum dedicated to preserving the “rich history of Texas authors while inspiring future writers.”
Among those ready to welcome these special guests plus book enthusiasts from across the state is Kyle Kramm, the director of both the Seguin Main Street Program and the Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB).
Kramm says the city is excited to be among the first communities in the state to help welcome back festivals this Memorial Day weekend.
“This is the first time Seguin will be hosting this festival. There’s festivals in lots of communities across the state and we are excited that the Texas Authors Institute of History chose Seguin to host their festival. I think it’s going to be a great opportunity for whole community to come out and meet some local authors and buy some books and look at some artwork and also hear some great musicians. If they are very successful, they are also going to be coming back to Seguin every year and they are already talking about next year making it bigger and better and so it’s really going to grow our community and strengthen downtown because that is where it’s going to be held in downtown Seguin around our Central Park,” said Kramm.
Kramm says the city is ready and prepared to welcome those traveling to Seguin for the one day event. He says the response thus far has been promising.
“There seems to be a good amount of interest. We are not getting a ton of phone calls but people don’t call us anymore as far hotels but we are seeing a lot of Facebook traffic. We are sharing it — about the event quite often,” said Kramm.
Kramm says the city is thrilled about officially reopening it’s downtown. He says it’s been a very difficult year and even more challenging for many of these creative artists.
“This event was supposed to happen in May of 2020 the first time but of course, with COVID, it was cancelled and so we were glad that they decided to give it another try and host it here in Seguin in 2021. So, we are very glad that they held out and are coming back even though we had to cancel last year and it was uncertain whether if we were even going to have it this year but thanks to the community stepping up to get vaccinated over the last couple of months, we are able to start hosting these events again,” said Kramm.
Kramm says local shops and restaurants also stand to benefit from this weekend’s festival. He says they too are ready.
“Our downtown area is the heart of our community and in order for that to be successful and strong, we’d like to have things rotating — events coming in that are going to bring people from outside of Seguin to come and explore in downtown. While they are here for the Lone Star Festival, we are hoping they are going to grab a lunch at Ebi Ebi or maybe go into Southern Good to do a little shopping or walk down to Funky Monkey for some antiques and so we hope to see that spill over effect when hosting that event here in Seguin,” said Kramm.
The Lone Star Festival is free and will be held on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Seguin’s Central Park. Pre-registration is available for those who wish to win prizes. To pre-register, visit lonestar.bookfestival.network. Central Park is located at 201 S. Austin St.