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Bookmarks Canceled; NC Folk Festival Still On With New Partnership

An overflow crowd enjoys a performance at the 2017 National Folk Festival in Greensboro. The event has since evolved into the North Carolina Folk Festival. DAVID FORD/WFDD

Two of the Triad's most popular festivals have announced their plans for the fall. Music fans can rejoice, but book lovers may be disappointed. 

The 16th annual Bookmarks Festival of Books and Authors has been canceled. The event had been scheduled for September 26th. The non-profit is still planning on holding a Sweet Sixteenth party on September 25th.

Jamie Rogers Southern is Bookmarks Operations Director. She says in a news release that the safety of visitors and staff is a priority, and there are too many unresolved questions to plan an event that can bring up to 15,000 people to downtown Winston-Salem.

The nonprofit plans on continuing outreach with smaller socially distanced events in the coming months, as well as extending curbside pickup and phone order service at its bookstore.

Meanwhile, in Greensboro, The Carolina Blues Festival is partnering with the North Carolina Folk Festival to present a weekend of free concerts September 11th through the 13th.

The Folk Festival is entering its third year, and recently announced plans to present a modified version of the event. The Carolina Blues Festival had originally been scheduled for this month.

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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