PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Book enthusiasts are in for a treat with the 2022 Portland Book Festival that returns on Saturday, Nov. 5.

For the past two years, the festival was either fully virtual or a hybrid of in-person and virtual events to accommodate the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Luckily, we’re at a place now where we can hold a festival that is very similar in size and shape to the festival we had in 2019,” Amanda Bullock said. Bullock is the Director of Public Programs for Literary Arts, the nonprofit organization that runs the book festival.

The event has looked a bit different each year. It was originally called Wordstock book festival and had been running since 2005. In 2015, Literary Arts relaunched the event.

“Larry Colton founded it and that was run for many years, quite successfully,” Literary Arts Director Andrew Proctor said. “It was sort of around 2013 [or] 2014. The festival was having a tough time financially and was looking for a new home. Their board came to us and asked if we would take on the festival and incorporate it into the organization’s goals.”

This year’s highly-anticipated festival is a culmination of all of the hard work that has been put into the event since the early 2000s. Now, attendees can look forward to food trucks, live jazz, pop-up readings, author talks, kids’ story time, a book market and more.

The Portland Book Festival is primarily held in the Portland Art Museum. General admission passes are $15 in advance and $25 on the day of the festival. Full-priced tickets include entry into the museum, as well as a $5 voucher for the book fair.

People who are 17 years old or under, or students with high school IDs get in free, although passes are still required.

There are a few premium events that require an additional $5 ticket, but they are well worth it. For example, Taylor Jenkins Reid — author of the acclaimed The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo — will be talking to Portlanders about her new work in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

In addition to the big day on Nov. 5, the Portland Book Festival will have events for its first-ever ‘Cover to Cover’ all throughout the week.

“Partner organizations are hosting events all around the city,” Bullock said. “So you can start your festival week on Tuesday, November 1. And there’s probably something in your neighborhood going on that week, too. I think that’s a great way to expand the festival’s reach geographically, which is really exciting for us.”

More information on the plethora of events offered in next weekend’s Portland Book Festival is here.

“The idea that we could bring the community back together again, in-person, in the Park Blocks around beautiful art, around interesting writers, around things that are really joyful, feels important and useful,” Proctor said.