Leo Tolstoy isn’t coming to the Wisconsin Book Festival this year, much to the chagrin of Jane Rotonda. As the new director of the festival, Rotonda has been spending her free time reading the 19th-century Russian novelist’s 1,296-page opus “War and Peace” for the first time.
“My approach to it is slow and steady,” Rotonda said. “Not like I have to get this done, but to really immerse yourself in it, take it in small, small bits in a way that you can enjoy it without being a heavy lift. Literally and figuratively.”
Rotonda is also taking a slow and steady approach to her new job, which she started last month. The festival’s previous director, Conor Moran, had already programmed all of the author events for spring before he took a position as executive director of the Madison Public Library Foundation. That’s given Rotonda time to observe festival events in action and start thinking about future programming. While the Wisconsin Book Festival takes place over four days in October, the Madison Public Library brands all of its book events as part of the festival.
Rotonda, a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism graduate who was a producer at Wisconsin Public Radio, said the position is a dream job for her.
“I don’t think I actually could have even dreamed this,” Rotonda said. “It’s that exciting. It’s a matter of timing and place and interests and kind of everything falling into a really good place. I’m very grateful.”
Rotonda talked with the Cap Times about her love of libraries, her background in public radio, and the importance of getting writers and readers in the same room together.
Tell me about your background. I’m sensing a lifelong love of reading here.
One thing that was pretty formative is I grew up within walking distance to our local library in Grand Haven, Michigan. Got that library card and it felt so powerful. And I think my parents as well sort of instilled this idea that books are powerful, and they can be a tool to access a world that you don’t know, or that’s unfamiliar, whether it’s actually real or imagined. And so between those two things, it was a happy space for me.
Did you have dreams of becoming an author or working in publishing?
I landed on majoring in journalism because of reading and because of how important I feel stories are. I would study at the Memorial Library. If you know the campus, that’s like the “serious” library. It’s a beautiful space. Where I think libraries are special is that you get this quiet space that can be this little pocket that’s yours. And you can focus on whatever you need to focus on.
Where did you go after college?
I moved to New York. Personal dream. Bought a one-way ticket. Just one of those things that you do after finishing college. It was wonderful.
I spent a couple of years there and then my partner who is a physician got into med school here, so we came back. I worked at the Children’s Museum, and I did a couple of other nonprofit, freelance sort of gigs, one of them being at Wisconsin Public Radio. I started helping out here and there, and eventually I got a position as the on-air fundraising manager. So I’m already using skills in this job that I used there. It was very good training for this.
After I felt I had given everything I could to the development world inside of WPR, I moved over to programming. I was the executive producer of Larry Meiller’s show, and I did special programming and projects for the Ideas Network as a whole.
That skill set ingrained in me that audience experience is first and foremost. The book festival is free and open to the public, and so the public needs to enjoy their experience, and get something from it. So between those two things, I’ve got the details and organization stuff covered, and also the outward-facing aspects of, what programs and conversations do we want to have? And what programs are important to our community?
It aligns with so much about what I care about. I keep saying to people, “I get to go to the library for work!”
How have things gone so far?
Conor had already programmed the spring, so I’m walking into an incredible spring lineup of immense diversity, between actual demographics of authors, book content, as well as the actual subject matter. He kind of knocked it out of the park for this spring.
So I get to experience this as like, “This is how we do this. This the caliber of what we put together.” And then I get to take stock and say, “This is awesome, what about this?” And start to imagine things for the fall celebration.
How do you program a festival, or even a series like the spring is, and encourage diversity in every sense of the word?
A critical part of it is that I’m behind every decision in terms of the author programming. So I do have the full scope of… we have these events, like we have four females and two males and three people of color. I think it’s helpful to have someone sort of standing behind all that and having the umbrella picture.
Another thing that serves the diversity mission well is our partnerships. The key partnerships for the book festival are endless: the creative writing folks at UW between the Center for Humanities, between all the different cultural studies, programs, and all those specific sectors within the university, but also just in our community. Accessing all of those partnerships, and making myself available to all of those partnerships, all of that is another way to build diversity in the programming.
For me that’s super important. Of course, the author, the book content is important. But the audience is really important too. Who is in that audience? And why are they there? And how and who isn’t in that audience? And why aren’t they? Asking those questions is at the top of my mind.
Are there other types of events that you think could fall under the festival?
I’m pretty committed to the pillars of what the book festival is. It’s about the books, it’s about the authors, it’s about having that open conversation and dialogue. I think there’s interesting ways to loop different groups in, and having different events and partners in a way that’s creative. But in the in the end, I definitely want to keep the Wisconsin Book Festival holding on to its the core mission and purpose. You don’t want to try to have it be “It’s going to be a concert!” Or “It’s going to be a dance!” Or “It’s going to be a workout!” We’re going to talk about books.
So what is the value of an author standing and talking to people about their book?
It’s hard to quantify, but I would say it’s the quality of putting people together in a room to have a conversation around some central idea or subject. It’s all about perspectives and sharing. And I think the value of the author and book focus is that it’s something that all different sorts of perspectives, backgrounds can come together and find appreciation and action through.
