Edible Book Festival is April 10 at UW-Madison Memorial Library

The 2012 Edible Book Festival takes place 4:30-6:30 pm on Tuesday, April 10 and promises to combine literary and culinary talents in the Madison community. A Cheerios Brideshead Revisited?  A Kindle made out of chocolate?  Vegetarian depictions of The Jungle?  These could possibly be just a few of the entries at the annual University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Library event.  An edible book is an entry made of edible materials, with the subject pertaining to books in shape or content.  In the past, participating food artists, families, and groups have worked with cake, goldfish crackers, alphabet soup noodles, Jell-O, licorice, and even Peeps!

The event is free and open to the public in the Memorial Library Commons (728 State Street, Room 460).  Members of the community are encouraged to attend, ogle the edible art, and vote for their favorite entries. A “real” cake will be served so that attendees aren’t tempted to taste the entries. Certificates will be awarded in multiple categories by the official judges:

● Orange Schroeder, owner of Orange Tree Imports and Cooking School
● Co-authors of the blog "Eating in Madison A to Z," the husband and wife team of JonMichael Rasmus and Nichole Fromm (who is also a librarian)

The deadline for entering the competition is April 2, 2012.  For more detailed information, online application, and photos from past festivals, see the website: www.library.wisc.edu/edible-book

The Edible Book Festival is scheduled in celebration of National Library Week (April 8-14), and is co-sponsored by Memorial Library and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Librarian’s Assembly.  The first festival in Madison was held in conjunction with the UW-Madison School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) Centennial Year celebrations. The roots of our event come from The International Edible Book Festival, the creation of Judith A. Hoffberg and Béatrice Coron.  This first festival was held in 2000, and the “Books 2 Eat” website (www.books2eat.com) was created concurrently, so people around the world could enjoy the wide variety of food artists' creations.

We on the UW-Madison Edible Book Festival Committee hope you will consider covering this unique event.

--Nancy McClements, Book Festival Committee