AWP - Thursday - Bookfair

I perhaps foolishly went right from the first two panels of the day right down to the bookfair, which was held in two joined large rooms in the basement of the Hilton.  With over 300 tables involved, things were cramped.  Most will probably agree that's putting it nicely.  Apparently this is especially true if you attended AWP in Austin, TX last year where things were quite spacious.

I had a chance to meet and/or have discussions with Fred Ramey and Greg Michalson of Unbridled Books.  Met Rusty Barnes of Night Train when I was by the Absinthe/Hobart table.  I had Nancy Zafris, fiction editor of The Kenyon Review stop me and take my picture - I then saw her again with Editor David Lynn and Managing Editor, Meg Galipault, over at the KR table.  I also found C.M. Mayo at the Tameme table, where she was kind enough to a) hand me a copy of An Avocado from Michoacan by Agustin Cadena, translated by herself - a lovely looking bilingual chapbook Tameme has released, as well as introduce me to Francisco Aragon, who handed me another fine looking chapbook - The Night Tito Trinidad KO'ed Ricardo Mayorga - poems by Kevin A Gonzalez.  The cover is made to look like a boxing poster, which goes nicely with the title.

I also met Kristin at the Macadam/Cage table who was kind enough to pass along a galley of Pia Z. Ehrardt's forthcoming story collection, Famous Fathers.  I ran into John McNally who had a table for his new anthology, When I Was a Loser: True Stories of (Barely) Surviving High School, which I picked up.  This had some great work in it, all solicited for the anthology (Maud Newton, Tod Goldberg, and Julianna Baggott are some I've already read and enjoyed, and there are many more great authors involved).

I also popped in on John Gallaher and subscribed to The Laurel Review - a bargain at the AWP rate of $5.  There was also the interesting Geri Taran, who had a table set up for her organization:  In the Company of Good Writers, which sets up online writing seminars.

The number of journals and presses that were there that I've never heard of before amazed me.  And I'm talking about publishers with a table full of new books, and journals on issue 16 or 17, not brand new entities to the industry.  After about an hour and a half of this, I was pretty overwhelmed and decided to head out to fresh air, ending the day around 2 p.m. or so, wandering around a bit longer and then heading out to get an early bite to eat.

Comments

[C.M. Mayo]

Hi Dan, it was good to meet you outside of cyberspace. Indeed, AWP can be overwhelming. (Good thing there was coffee and candy aplenty.) Literary culture is flourishing indeed! I hope you can make it to AWP next year in NYC. At Book Expo America last year in Washington DC, there was a bloggers get-together with Wendi Kaufman (The Happy Booker) and several others. I didn't hear anything about one at AWP-- maybe I missed it (there certainly was a Niagara of stuff to miss).

[Dan Wickett]

To my knowledge there was not one, though you could have found Pinky, Gwenda Bond and myself in similar quarters at times.

The LBC has had parties/get togethers at BEA and not AWP, in recent years.

[John Gallaher]

Dan, it was great meeting you. And I'm totally jealous of your ability to remember everyone you met at AWP. The thing is a smear for me.

I'm also jealous of your pop up link previews. If I can figure out how, I'm going to steal it. Because that's what we do.