The AABF launched with a splash in 2003. There were celebrated authors, a large street fair, and a budget to match. But when the economy hit the skids, so did its funding.

“The festival absolutely started because of Karl Pohrt and Shaman Drum,” says banker Peter Schork, who joined the AABF board eight years ago. Pohrt “got support from Flint Ink, Cushing-Malloy, and Borders … Big money, big books, great festivals on the street.” But that “very, very ambitious” format proved “tough to sustain. Karl Pohrt paid, through his organization, an enormous amount. He had a staffer who worked probably half-time [on the festival]–that he was paying for!”

“Their primary support was from the university, from Borders, the Ann Arbor News, Shaman Drum,” says U-M librarian Jamie Lausch Vander Broek, who joined the board in 2011. “So that kind of tells you the story.”

In addition to losing revenue, one of the festival’s longtime venues, the U-M Graduate Library, was unavailable that year. “They didn’t have any place to go!” says Vander Broek. “So I hosted them in the space I was managing, at North Quad. It was really a mini iteration of the book festival that year.

“The following year, I became involved in the year-long planning,” Vander Broek continures, “and then our library–the University �xADLibrary–began to take a much more active role, and since that time, every year it’s gotten bigger and better and more organized.”

The library doesn’t write a big check, but it provides a lot of in-kind support, including the use of space on campus for a popular all-day writers workshop on June 20. While the festival no longer has any paid staff, says Schork. “There are probably five university employees that do a ton of the background work.”

“We’re very excited the street fair is back,” says AABF board chair Rebecca Dunkle, the U-M’s associate librarian for library operations. Held on W. Washington on Saturday afternoon (see Events), this year’s fair will have about forty vendors–booksellers, authors, libraries, publishers, and nonprofits like 826 Michigan, along with music by Mr. B, a story time for children, and food, and ice cream trucks.

Vander Broek is especially excited about is the third and newest part of the AABF, the “Moonlight Book Crawl.” On Wednesday through Saturday evenings (see Events), poets and writers will do pop-up readings in what she calls “really unexpected locations”–including such normally non-literary venues as the Arena sports bar, Seva restaurant, and Beezy’s Cafe in Ypsilanti. “We take this programming out into spaces where people already are,” she says–places where “they have no expectation of experiencing poetry.”

“There are so many people in our overall area who are passionate about reading and writing and literacy,” says Dunkle. “We’d love to make sure we get the word out widely, that the Ann Arbor Book Festival is back.

Looking ahead, the festival is starting to reach out to Detroit writers and media. “We’re creeping over east this year by moving into Ypsilanti,” Dunkle says. We’re taking baby steps.”