By Brian Dunlap

The 4^th Annual LibroMobile Literary Arts Festival was quiet. The sky was a blanket of gray and venders were spread out among the Orange County Heritage Museum’s gardens, selling art, jewelry, clothes and other items, instead of literature.

Initially I was disappointed, seeing that I could experience the entire festival, expect for the readings, in a few short minutes. But I didn’t know what I thought I’d expect. A more traditional literary festival with booths for local authors, SoCal/Orange Country presses and independent bookstores?

However, the festival was founded and run by the small literary co-op bookstore LibroMobile in Santa Ana, to build and maintain diversity in their community, by uniting local and visiting writers, artists, venders and book lovers, for a day of readings, musical performances and more. The founder and owner Sarah Rafael Garcia was the main organizer, along with the bookstore’s small staff, highlighted by Bookstore and Events Manager Marilynn Montaño. With such a small staff to organize, having it feel as if it was a one woman show, the festival was quite enjoyable. I had just arrived too early.

An eclectic mix of music poured across the museum’s grounds from DJ Nickyboi in the Gazebo, during and between the literary readings. After the Drag Queen Story Hour, Santa Ana/Orange Country prose authors took the stage to share their mostly local stories. Lifestyle, food and features writer for the TimesOC, Sarah Mosqueda, read her food article about her Mexican food journey, growing to appreciate the history and heritage behind the food of her people, causing her to love it even more. And other writers Elaine Lewinnek, Brian Lin and Andrew Tonkovich, read prose that was funny, political and heartbreaking.

As the day progressed, I ran into writers I know, such as Lisbeth Coimen, who arrived early as well, and later, just before the poetry reading kicked off the last reading of the day, Jessica Wilson-Cardenas and Juan Cardenas and OC Poet Laureate Natalie Graham.

The day never got as warm as advertised and during the Multimedia Performance with Josie Wreck, it began to sprinkle. I stayed under the Main Stage’s awning as this transgender Xicanx femme and experimental artist of punk and gothic persuasion, performed a few songs and read several poems she’d scribbled down to help her cope during the pandemic.

As the day’s final reading SanTana Poets y Más grew near, the crowd by the stage increased and I was introduced to poet Ellen Webre, a biracial, first generation, Taiwanese American poet, born in Hong Kong and raised in California. Kind, she had released her debut collection A Burning Lake of Paper Suns from Orange Country’s Moon Tide Press, late last year. Webre had brought three different broadsides of three different poems from her book to sell. The beautiful artwork surrounding each poem appeared done in pen and ink, with white space between the lines, where the images could be colored in if desired. Just like me, Webre had set out to write in another writing genre before arriving at poetry. Originally she had planned to write screenplays in Hollywood.

SanTana Poets y Más kicked off with the youngest writer who read at this year’s festival. 16-year-old poet Tina Mai is Orange County’s inaugural and current Youth Poet Laureate. She stood behind the mic with confidence and in spoken-word style read a powerful poem that belied her age. Mai began with the quote, good fools. “That is the best thing a girl can be in this world, ,poem saying, “Or a beautiful silent body/nameless/ and voiceless…” launching into a rebuke that girls have to be “censored sweetness,” and instead argued that girls need to be loud, speak up and use their voices.

Then the remainder of the poets read—Juan Cardenas, Ellen Webre, J. Martin Strangeweather and Gina Duran—before the reading was bookended with the other inaugural OC Poet Laureate, Dr. Natalie J. Graham.

Building and maintaining diverse community is what this day was truly about, which is why once the poets finished, the Modesta Avila Award was given to Santa Ana community leader Dwayne “BH” Shipp. He has continued to make an impact, carrying on his mother’s legacy, through the annual OC Black History Month Parade and OC Heritage Council, as the organization’s President.

The love Sarah Rafael Garcia’s continues to have for her hometown of Santa Ana, was palpable when she introduced Dwayne to the audience, in her words and through an early memory of attending the Black History Month Parade.

The cool day was over. It was time for Música by Lover Sonicos and time to dance.