Agnes Scott College, Little Shop of Stories and Daren Wang all have reason to be yelling “Squeeeee!” this week.

In an extensive article profiling the prolific, counter-culture, superstar author Neil Gaiman, all three Decatur institutions found themselves mentioned in the latest issue of the New Yorker.  After detailing Gaiman’s life-story and his unique fan-base in an elegant journalistic style , the article closes with Gaiman’s December trip to Decatur.

In December, Gaiman flew to Decatur, Georgia, the location of Little Shop of Stories, which he had picked as a winner of the contest. In tribute to “The Graveyard Book,” the store had transformed its basement into a crypt and led the children in a danse macabre, beating out a store in Larchmont, New York, that had brought in a live white pony, in honor of the preferred conveyance of the novel’s death figure.

It was a foggy day, with intermittent rain, and people started lining up before noon outside Agnes Scott College, which was hosting the event. The reading started at six.

Little Shop announced the news yesterday in a post on their blog, while Mr. Wang had a bit of an identity crisis over on Verb.

More great press for the little city of growing book fame!

Daren Wang tweets…

I’ll be announcing the first concert in the Eddie & Agnes series on Twitter first. We’ve got a contract, just need to work out the details!

Think that might merit a follow?  If so click -> @darenwang

If that isn’t enough, Daren promises to promote many more of his “hare-brained ideas” there.  And what would Decatur be without a big book festival with sponsored port-o-lets and beer that costs in excess of $2,000??

As just announced on Twitter, the Decatur Book Festival is hosting a free preview screening of the film-adaption of “The Lovely Bones” at North DeKalb’s AMC theater on January 7th at 7pm.

If you’d like to snag yourself some free tickets, email Daren@verb.org.

It’s kind of fitting that the man who created “Verb.org” and started the Decatur Book Festival was recently written up in a publication that abbreviated reads “ABC”.  (Yes, I find amusement in the oddest of places.)

The Atlanta Business Chronicle profiled Decatur’s Daren Wang on Friday, though most of the article is currently behind a firewall.  However, if you have a subscription, you can now learn more about the man who, among other things, built a book festival and convinced a Decatur resident to purchase a beer for over $2,000.  Is there a master’s program for that?

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the post title, “Man in the Red Shoes” label can be explained by clicking here.

Remember that lovely tease that I floated a few weeks back about the man in the red shoes, an alley and multiple weddings?  Remember how it kinda fizzled because while it was guessed, I couldn’t confirm or deny?

Welp, the word is now officially out.  The AJC got the scoop yesterday announcing “Eddie and Agnes”, another great Daren Wang brain-child, which many folks at both Eddie’s and Agnes Scott have worked very hard over the past few months to make a reality.

Daren wrote about the new partnership this morning on his own blog “Verb”…

We posted the wedding announcement in the AJC yesterday, courtesy Jamie Gumbrecht.

These two are made for each other. Agnes with her stately 817-seat Presser Hall, flawless sight-lines, gorgeous windows, comfy seats and great acoustics. Eddie with his expertise, experience, charm, and rolodex. Like Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel, you can only wonder how it took so long.

We’re working on several concert bookings right now, and we hope to have butts in seats in mid-to-late February.

As Daren said to me a few weeks back, it’s like one day waking up and having a Variety Playhouse size-venue smack in the middle of the city.

Neil signed Daren Wang’s car.  He writes…

I now am the proud owner of a 2009 Neil Gaiman Limited Edition Scion Xb . This is the prototype.

It should be interesting when Daren has to explain to police why a bunch of starry-eyed tweens stole the plastic around his gear shift.

As anyone can guess, it’s notoriously difficult to estimate attendance levels at festivals that don’t employ ticketed entry.  That said, Decatur Book Festival Executive Director Daren Wang predicts around a 15% increase vs. last year.

How’d the DBF powers-that-be come up with that number?  Well…

The square was more crowded, there were more venues, the smaller venues were more full, the lines at the larger venues were longer and it was a lot harder to get through the crowds.  I don’t think, however, that we had 80,000 people in town over the weekend.  So the bottom line is we are estimating a 15% increase, but not putting an absolute number on it.

Sounds about right to me.

With the Decatur Book Festival just days away, it seems like you can’t even get in your first cup of coffee this week without being accosted by some from of DBF press in these final days. (The Book Festival has a distinct advantage of more free press over other festivals since it can play off journalists love of writing about themselves and their “craft.”)

• This morning, DBF program director Tom Bell sat down with WABE to discuss what’s in store for attendees of this year’s festival.

• Over on Creative Loafing, they’re posting a Poem-A-Day during the countdown to the event.

• And probably one of the most interesting pieces I’ve yet seen on the Festival: over on the great blog/online journal “Like the Dew”, Lenz’s Alice Murrary chronicles the very beginnings of the festival when it was just a couple neurons suspended in Daren Wang’s head.  A great read.
• Mingie World Arts is featured in today’s AJC selling “fanciful and colorful” folk art figures from Oaxaca, Mexico all reading books.  20% of proceeds benefit the town of La Union.  Ann reports that the figures are flying off the shelves.
• As Scott mentioned in the comments, the AJC has a profile of Little Shop author Terra McVoy.  She’s speaking at 1:30p on Saturday on the Teens “Escape” stage.

And while we’re on the topic of the Book Festival, has anyone planned their schedule for the weekend yet?  While there are already many authors I already consider “can’t miss”, I’m finding that filling in the holes in my schedule is a rather daunting task.

Who are your “can’t miss” authors for the festival?

Access Atlanta has a splendid article about the upcoming Decatur Book Festival with extensive interviews with festival founders Daren Wang and Tom Bell.

If you’re a book festival junkie, there’s probably not much in this article that you haven’t read before.  However, my love of speculation requires that I point out that Wang and Bell state in the article that they can easily see the DBF attendance rate doubling before Decatur hits any sort of capacity.

That’s 150,000 people.

He’s founded a book festival and come up with the idea of selling a beer for upwards of $2,000 in order to help locals in need.

Now Decatur’s Daren Wang has another article to stuff in his folder of “Crazy and Crazy Successful Ideas”: banner tote bags.

First introduced at the Decatur Book Festival launch party last month – though I don’t recall him saying the idea was his – Wang came up with the idea of recycling old DBF banners into messenger bags and totes.  He worked with Ann at Mingei World Arts to find a craftsman to fashion the bags and the rest is history.  Well, the rest will soon be history.

On Monday, in addition to tackling the document-heavy DeVry annexation, the Decatur city commission approved the “recycling” of old city banners into totes, fashioned by Colombian refugee Maria Cristina Giraldo Echeverria.  Echeverria is guaranteed $10 an hour for the work and 10% of sales from the fund go to Decatur Youth Fund, according to an AJC article this morning.

The AJC was so excited about this fashionable recycling story – especially in comparison to that snoozer topic of DeVry annexation – that they put a tease for the story in that little “metro” box on their front page this morning.

But the real question is, what will Daren Wang come up with next?  A beer-powdered lawn mower?  Dog collars that call 911 when your dog senses danger?   Sponsored port-o-lets?  Oh wait…

ALSO: Both my wife and Carl alert us to today’s Daily Candy that features Himalayan Trading Post Candles from Mingei.