Behind the Wheel of a Bookmobile
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This is an extremely cool idea. Load up an old Bookmobile (converted to run on biodiesel) with Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling authors for a cross-country road trip—along the way, giving away books and interviewing people about what books have meant in their lives—and document it all with webisodes and a travel blog. That’s what authors Peter Laufer (Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq) and Tom Corwin plan to do this fall on their Behind the Wheel of a Bookmobile tour, to be documented by National Geographic magazine.
Behind the Wheel of a Bookmobile
a multimedia project by Laufer and Corwin
Behind the Wheel of a Bookmobile, a quixotic journey by authors Peter Laufer and Tom Corwin, honors the place books still have in our national consciousness.
It began with the whimsical idea of buying a vintage bookmobile, stocking it with donated books from publishers, and driving it cross-country through small towns with well-known authors taking turns at the wheel. At each stop Laufer and Corwin open the bookmobile’s doors inviting the public in to take their choice of digital and analog titles in exchange for an interview about what books have meant in their lives. A documentary film crew and a radio production team capture those stories, along with conversations with those authors along for the ride.
“Books influence our lives in ways too often untold,” says Corwin. “Our trip is designed to tell some of those stories.” Laufer says the back roads route connects the project to America’s literary history, “The rural landscape, small towns, and a road trip are a heritage that fuel our cosmopolitan lives, and we aim to capture it.”
Laufer and Corwin have a growing list of American authors who have signed on to support the project and in most cases take a shift behind the wheel of the bookmobile: including Pulitzer Prize-winners Lawrence Wright, Michael Chabon & Juno Diaz, as well as bestselling authors Tobias Wolff, Annie Lamott, Daniel Handler, Ayelet Waldman, Arthur Phillips, Peter Coyote, Robert Anderson, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Scott Simon, Mark Kurlansky, Tamim Ansari, Amy Tan, Andrew Sean Greer, and Michael Pollan – with more joining the trip day by day.
The project has received the hearty support of the American Association of Publishers as well as the American Library Association (with marketing and promotion to their 66,000 member base) - and a deal has been consummated to purchase a beautiful used bookmobile (bio-diesel ready, capacity 3,200 volumes: see below) in Chicago. National Geographic has committed to feature the journey in National Geographic Traveler magazine.
Download a PDF of the press release.
