I said for 28 years for the Library Congress and retired a couple years ago. He told me that the National Book festival was something he needed help with and had been started in 2001 as an idea that came from laura bush, laura bush asked Jim Billington around the time of the inauguration in 2001 whether not there was a National Book festival comparable to the one she started in the texas, the texas book festival he said there is not yet but there will be. He came up with the idea of how to put together National Book festival, the idea was to do it in the mall in a series of tents that were set up for the first year end then it turned out getting sponsorships were more difficult than they thought it would be. So he asked me if i get involved and i told him i would do so and i began to be a sponsor and a cochair of the event, ive done that for ten years or so. It is very important to me that the festival goes well and i enjoyed a great deal is a great gift for the country to have a natio