A three-day book festival kicks off in Harbor Springs on Friday. Over 50 authors from around the country will be there for panel discussions, readings and other events. “We’re celebrating the culture of books in a beautiful part of the world, where most events are free,” says Amy Gillard, executive director of the festival.

If you walk through downtown Petoskey, you might notice some old advertising murals on the sides of a few buildings. One of them is on the Coburn building on Mitchell Street. The mural is a weathered patchwork of ads for companies that used to occupy the building, like H.A. Easton Hardware and Cook Electric Company. The mural had almost entirely faded away, until a local artist decided to restore it.

When Canadian Cory Trépanier graduated college, he jumped into the world of commercial art. He did airbrush painting for ad agencies and magazines. A lot of work inside a studio. Then when he was 33, he took a trip to Lake Superior to paint the natural landscape. “That was a turning point for me,” he says. "All I could recall, with my wife in the vehicle, was talking about, ‘how am I going to spend more time painting my own work?’”

Agostina Segatori owned the Café du Tambourin in the late 1800’s. The Parisian cafe was a popular spot with artists, including Vincent Van Gogh. One day, Van Gogh decided to paint Agostina.

Karen Curlee says when you get to a certain age and you start wondering, “What’s it all about?” you should go back to do what you did at 13 years old. For Karen, that was singing. “Nobody could sing like I could sing when I was 13,” she says. “There was no technique involved. It was just I knew how to sing.”

Michael Coonrod has been teaching piano at Interlochen Center for the Arts for over 40 years. But after a horrible camping accident, his career was put in jeopardy.

Chase Hunt loves skateboarding and longboarding. But even more than that, he loves graffiti art. He says the two go hand in hand. “They’re kind of the same people,” he explains. “You meet a lot of graffiti artists that are skateboarders.”

Interlochen Arts Camp just wrapped up for the season. D uring the summer, over 230 pianos are on campus for the students. That’s a lot of work for a piano tuner. “The only thing I can compare it to is having an infant,” says Jessica Masse. “And always having to just be at their beck and call.”

Jacquie Gwyn is 73 years old, and she teaches line dancing in Interlochen. “It just lifts you up; that’s the best way to put it,” says Jacquie.

Leonard Maltin is one of the most recognized film critics out there. Why do his reviews resonate with so many people? “I love movies," he says. "And I love what I do. People tell me that comes through...it’s honest, it’s genuine.”