From Barbara Kingsolver's keynote speech to the intriguing match-ups of literary kin, it seemed that the N.C. Festival of the Book couldn't get any better than the 2006 event based at Duke University.

And it might not. UNC-Chapel Hill is passing on its turn as host of the biennial festival in 2008, and the other university librarians who have organized the event say it may no longer be practical to pull it off.

"I know some people will be disappointed," said Sarah Michalak, librarian and vice provost at UNCCH. But she said the university couldn't take on the monumental task of organizing the event and also concentrate on developing its library programs as part of its strategic plan.

Resource issues have daunted the festival since its founding in 1998. The first N.C. Literary Festival, featuring Annie Dillard and John Grisham, was sponsored by the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC-CH. Money problems derailed plans to make the festival biennial. It returned in 2002 after the university librarians, led by Susan K. Nutter of N.C. State University, resurrected it with a plan of rotating it among UNC, NCSU and Duke.

"This was something that was a real strength and treasure in North Carolina, its writers and talent that we have here," said Nutter, also a vice provost. "We wanted to foster it."

Without a dedicated staff or institutional home, the host school has had to start from scratch with planning and raising money.

The 2002 version, held in Chapel Hill and run with a $200,000 budget, featured Julia Alvarez and a concentration of regional writers. The Raleigh edition in 2004, with a $150,000 budget, boasted Alice Walker and Dennis Lehane and added a film component.

Last year Duke had a $280,000 budget, half of which the university raised; the rest came from foundations, corporations and the other three campuses (N.C. Central University was brought in for the first time). Duke also hired a director to focus exclusively on the festival. In addition to the wattage of Kingsolver and Tom Wolfe, the festival added intrigue with pairs of writers -- Allan Gurganus with former student Ann Patchett, Doug Marlette and close friend Pat Conroy, Kaye Gibbons and chum Mary Chapin Carpenter -- for conversations. The event was widely praised as the best of all the festivals.

But Nutter isn't ready to concede to the demise of the universities' joint effort. When it became apparent that UNC-CH planned to bow out, she suggested that the campuses pool their library programs under the literary festival name and be more aggressive about publicizing them.

"At N.C. State we're going to go at it with a vengeance," she said. "It's important to us."

Michalak said UNC had recently organized programs that might fit the idea -- one featuring Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and others involving English explorer-artist John White and North Carolina writer John Ehle's reprinted book "The Free Men."

"We can begin to forge out of that a literary series," Michalak said. "It's going to take a little time to build that. We're hoping to be able to create a fully satisfying stream of events that people will come to rely on."

Duke librarian and vice provost Deborah Jakubs said she would still like to see the festival return to campus one day.

"Don't write us off yet," she said.