Hi everyone, we're gonna get started. I know we still have some folks coming in after grabbing lunch. Welcome Welcome to these introduce I'm just alpha from the ABA. In these introduce unnecessary. indies introduced was developed with the goal of discovering new voices and building relationships between independent booksellers and authors who are at the beginning of their careers the program has now been around for 11 years. I've been working on it for seven years since I've been at ABA. And the beginning of each season is always the same. The booksellers who have agreed to be on that season's committees get a little overwhelmed by the number of submissions they're receiving. And some of them start wondering if they've made a mistake. Luckily, many of them have furry friends for moral support. But after three to four months of reading and discussing they with their fellow panel panelists across the country, they have read books they never would have picked up otherwise built friendships with bookselling colleagues across the country and found new voices and stories that they're so excited to share with you all. And that's what we're here to do today to share these voices and stories. There are flyers on some of the tables and also available for download in the app and on book web.org. If this process sounds like something that you're interested in, let me know we're all we keep our list of potential readers for future seasons. And today we are so lucky to have many of the authors who were selected for the winter spring 2024 season with us in person to tell us about their books. We're so grateful to your publishers for bringing you to Cincinnati, and we're excited to hear from you. First I'd like to introduce our chairs for the season this season. Starting with the Chair of the adult panel, Luis Correa of Avid Bookshop, and Athens, Georgia, who will introduce the adult panelists.
Thank you, Jess. It gives me great pleasure to introduce my colleagues who were on the panel with me for the adult list this year. We have Cathy bomb with tattered cover bookstore in Denver, Colorado, Francis Metzker from County, a country bookshelf in Bozeman, Montana, Devin overly with loganberry books in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Melissa Sagan Dorf with Harvard bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Stephanie skis, the novel neighbor in Webster Groves, Missouri. And I'd also like to mention Paula farmer who couldn't be with us with book passage in Madera Corte Madera, in California. Thank you
Thank you, Louise. And now I'd like to welcome the chair of the kids panel, Molly Olivo of Child's Play in Washington DC to introduce the kids booksellers and then we will move right into author introductions.
Hello, well this room is big. Okay. So I'm happy to introduce our children's panelists and Branson from beach books in Seaside Oregon. Marianna lieben are leaving from cover to cover books for young readers. Andy Richardson from Charlton bookstore in Richmond, Virginia. Teresa Steele from old firehouse books in Fort Collins. Paul swipedon from the silver unicorn bookstore in Acton and not with us today but always with us is Aaron Rivera from the frugal frigate in Redlands.
Hi, everybody I told my friends to do that. Thanks friends. I am honored to start things off today by introducing ratio. Here he comes. And his adorable graphic memoir alterations.
Sorry about that. Sorry about that. Mr. Q. My bad my bad. I'm here now. Thanks, Andy. Okay, tell us about your book. All right. Well, my book alterations is about Kevin, this 11 year old kid. It's kind of loosely inspired by my own life growing up in Toronto as a child of immigrants and being raised with my single mom living with my sister and my grandma. And it's just about the kids trying to figure out how he's gonna fit in the world at home and outside and dealing with how to be seen and also an unseen also, but also learning to gain the courage to stand out. So that that's a bit of the
story. You know, read a little for us.
I will I will. So this passage here, or which way is it over here? Okay. It's a graphic novels do this. So I wrote alterations in memory of my mother, who was a seamstress to support my sister and me. Growing up in Toronto and this passage is a conversation that I used to have with her often and as you can see over there. So start at the top of page 26. I'm going to try and play my mom here. So bear with Kevin, I need you to help out at the store again. This weekend. But Mom, do I have to? I don't want to argue today. It's it's time for you to help. Why are you working so much? Why am I working so much? Yeah, why? Am I Sorry, buddy turns over, dude. Because I have to make money to pay the bills. So I can put food on the table. So I can offer you a better life. And it's harder now. Your dad hasn't paid child support yet and I need every client I can get. I still don't understand. Kevin. I'm tired. And I need to help her with the dishes. We can talk about this later. She angrily runs out of the room. Way to go man had to get mom upset. So what I was curious. can even ask questions. What's the point? I don't know if you guys were all in your teen years. Having that conversation.
It's so good. Y'all read it immediately. Tell us a little bit about your path to publication since this is your debut.
Okay, so I wrote it all down. Okay, so thank you for that question. I wrote that down to listen, if you had told me just a few years ago, I'd be standing here in this room full of WORD magicians and amazing authors, especially this table here. I would have said that you're you know, come on. You're crazy. No way. Get out here. But I think I came into publication and very slightly roundabout way. Alterations started with his little slice of life drawings about my childhood, but my family about growing up as a kid of immigrants. But also they also served as many tributes to my mom who had passed away. I guess I was just trying to work some stuff out, you know, but at the same time, my oldest kid was really getting into reading and comics and just we would make weekly stops at the Indy local bookshop and he would devour books. It was very expensive. But I began to notice I started looking around that there weren't many stories with Asian leads or main characters. So I was thinking it'd be cool. It'd be kind of cool if like, you know for my kid to see books with characters that they can probably see themselves in. And so while I was, you know, sitting on that I was I kept drawing and a little while later Netflix had an open submission for animated series. So I took this collection of drawings and I made this proposal. I pitched it as an animated series. It got turned down, which was fine, because I, at that point, also met my agent Albert Lee. Shout out to you, UTA and the wonderful people at Union Square who saw potential in this as a graphic novel. So I began writing the manuscript in 2021, roughly after that, like a year after I started the drawing process, and by mid 2023, I had completed the whole thing. So but I just want to also mention that you know, I, I worked in animation. I said that before, and as a story artists, drawing storyboards for last like 15 plus years, and I get to shape and mold stories every day and often I'm just a facilitator for the director and the writer and for other people's stories, so I guess it never occurred to me that would eventually make my own, which makes this whole journey here extra special because I took a risk going to something that I had no clue in how it's going to turn out. So when pub date arrive you know, I went into my local my family, I went to my local indie bookshop. So this was about three weeks ago, and I saw the book on the shelf and it was just, you know, was was quite quite experienced. I was like, This is wild, and it's amazing. And especially after seeing my kids and my wives reactions, and how proud of the were so because in the book like I was saying earlier, I talked about being invisible, and these are one of the rare times for me, that being seen felt good. So I'm proud of the journey. I'm grateful for how I got here and I feel like this right now being with amongst you guys, in this room full of amazing authors and writers and booksellers. It's just all bonus. So I appreciate you guys. Thank you
Thank you for sharing this gorgeous book with us.
It gives me great pleasure to introduce Sarah Daniela Rivera. The author of the blue mimes.
Hi, I'm going to read a poem from my collection of poetry called shimmy esta lucuma and this poem are its lucuma seeds seeds of the lucuma fruit contains the line drawings that are on the front of the book. So in the poem, each little seed has a fragment of the poem underneath. So this is sent me as the lucuma seed pitch lined up. Each a WORD I learned incorrectly or not. At all. Aquino's to these SC or not a fruit that the becau shred texture days punctuated by loss, the right thing to say or do as elusive as a taste unremembered. I always believed I walked multiple worlds but I lived in pre translation, waiting for names to drop into my mouth. I'm sorry, of SS Makey. Wilco, my slight and rotating catalogue of apologies. How to be an archive of things no one thought to tell you
thank you, Sara. Well, in the collection, you write us that the name of those CD OMAS palisade law we have two languages with which to approximate one pain and your collection flows between Spanish and English, knowing and uncertainty. How did you decide what language to write in while you compose these poems?
Thank you for your question. Yeah. Especially like
a bilingual person to I'm like, what, how?
Thank you. So I think at some point, I stopped making conscious decisions around when I was going to code switch or write in one language versus another I think that poetry is the space where all of the forms of language we have inside of us should be available to play and to draft in. And if you grow up with any degree of bilingualism or multilingualism, in your brain or in your family or in your community, you're used to kind of an organic movement, I think between languages like my mom will switch languages in the middle of a grammatical clause, you know. So it felt really liberating to just start to allow that in the writing process. Instead of filtering it or trying to control when it happened. And then there are just emotions and things that are expressible in one language more than another or untranslatable between languages. So I think it's a really beautiful tool to be able to go to that language when you want to feel or express that thing.
Thank you. Thank you. That's Yes, I should say. Thank you.
I'm very excited to introduce Sally bossier, the author of cactus country.
Hello, I'm going to read a very short section from the first chapter. Without looking up from his game, the boy pulled a knife from his pocket. In one motion, he whipped it open pointing its blade at my face. If you touch that, he said I'll cut you I froze staring cross eyed down the knives sharp gleaming tip before today my vision of the Southwest had consisted of lonely cowboys, unsettled horses, roving marauders and wooden stage coaches. And bloody OK Corral style. shootouts against a vast landscape of sand. I knew the region had a violent history, but never expected another child to threaten me with $1 store pocket knife. flicking my eyes from the blade to the boy's fierce angry gaze. I realized three things First, this boy thought I was another boy. Second, his threat was a test. And third, if I had any hope of surviving here, I needed to pass it. Thank you
you write from your younger selves perspective so authentically, with so much care? How did you bridge the gap between who you were when you were younger and who you were when you started writing this book?
Well, for a long time, I avoided writing this book. I didn't want to look back. I didn't want to remember the child who I had been because I didn't understand who I was in the present. And so that's very funny for a nonfiction writer. So I wrote about anything and everything except my past. My parents had a very interesting set of lives. They were Hungarian sea lion trainers and a circus. And so you know, a little bit eccentric. That's how we ended up in the desert in the airstream in the first place. Right. So I wrote a whole book about that. That's what I that's what I wrote. I put my heart and my soul into that book. It was heavily researched. I learned to write on that book, but every time I would bring it to my thesis advisor or to other writers for a workshop, they would ask me, where are you in this? Why are you writing this? And I just didn't know. So you know that that book wasn't landing and the day came when I when I put it aside and I had been away from the Southwest for a long time at that point, because I'd gone to grad school in two different states. And I felt as though I was starting to miss home, right and I felt as though maybe I was ready to find out who I was and why I was. And so I just started writing and I didn't know how to answer these questions about gender or about why I made the choices I made or what they meant for me now. So I started with what I knew and what I knew was the landscape of Tucson, Arizona and that desert that I grew up in so I started by writing the landscape writing about the plants which are sharp and stoic and writing about the sun which is fierce and so intensely hot. It's like you're on another planet. And from there, I started writing about the boys and the men that I remembered in that desert and the effect that they had on me and so I started writing my way into the past in this way through what I knew. And through doing that I learned so much about who I am now and why I am now and it was a really beautiful process.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for that. Question. And thank you all for being here.
Hello,
I'm beyond excited to introduce Lorena Lopez, author of city girl.
Thank you. Hello. Hi
chapter one.
Elissa, my body is still getting used to hers. And even though I don't want to. I flinch as my mommy runs her fingers through my black hair. I don't really know what she thinks of me yet. But she does say my hair is as smooth as rose petals. I wish she would tell me that I'm beautiful. Or that she missed me a lot or that I'm really smart. I know Miss Lee and Ms. Luce think I'm smart, but they also think I'm annoying. They narrow their eyes. When they can't stop fidgeting. When I make drawings of them when I laugh out loud while they talk and talk. On the subway. I look at the other girls from a distance. They don't seem too different from me. Maybe they're also smart and annoying. Maybe their hair is also soft. Maybe their mommies also don't tell them that they are beautiful. But do they feel what I'm feeling that all of this seems impossible. I try to imagine their thoughts. Are they remembering something? What are they remembering? To their memories feel like mine? Like foggy stories like dreams
thank you so much for writing such a phenomenal and needed book at its core. At its core city girls is a beautiful book about friendship and all the nuances that come with it. Why was it important for you to center the complexity of middle school friendships?
Yeah, so Middle School is really strange kind of liminal space. You have one foot in earlier childhood and then one foot and adolescence. And it's just a really interesting time to explore as a writer for me, and it's also really fun to explore. It's a time when you're kind of stepping away from the nuclear family, your parents are no longer superhuman is starting to become human. And your friendships start to become really poignant. Which is, as you said, What city girls is about is about friendships. So yeah, that's why that's why I've said in middle school
that's awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you
Hello, now I am so thrilled to introduce a video by Kathy McLeod for her fantastic graphic memoir, continental drifter.
Hello, American Booksellers Association, and Kathy McLeod, author continental shifter which I'm so thrilled to say has been pegged as an indie is introduced selection. I'm so grateful to have been selected and so grateful for everything we do independent booksellers are doing for my book and for books in general. Thank you again, for all that you've done for Continental drifter. I'm so excited. And as a debut author your support really means the world to me.
Netta Lewers Daughters of the lamp is a magical tale of what happens when a science minded kid encounters things she can't quite explain. I was so charmed by the family love and the Arabian fairy tales in this book. It's adorable and there's a second one coming out this summer. So here's Mata with a message for us.
I booksellers I've met a Luers and I'm so excited to be sharing an excerpt of daughters of the lamp with you in which logical minded Sahara meets with a fortune teller she thinks is completely bogus. The moment the fortune teller pressed her thumb just harvest palm, a warmth rushed from her fingers to the rest of her body. Your fate line runs deep child, the palm reader traced her finger across the line from Sahara as risks to the base of her middle finger. If Sahara had known better she destroying the woman's skin was glowing and lighting up her hand along with it. Whoa Vicki marveled from behind. She was so easily fooled. The winds of fate approach you must turn to them. Sahara twisted her head around, not with your eyes mightier, but with your heart. You must trust what you cannot see.
Give me a break.
What Sahar saw was a total fake and now thanks to Vicki, she wasted her last $2
Hello, and I am now thrilled to introduce Justinian huaying Author of the Emperor and the endless Palace
first, feel the beat of a hypnotic bass in your head. A real clumping or one that fingers your soul. Do you hear it? Good. Let it wash over you like oral pleasure. Before you in a Grand Arena is a sea of pulsing sweating golden skinned men dancing to the mind fucking beat under blinding rainbows of light. Electric potential hums in the air punctuated with sudden blasts of cold mist, a welcome relief of icy shots in this otherwise stifling pit of musk in meat. On stage the men are muscled like Mongol Empire warriors with enough abs and PECS to conquer all the lands many times over. Welcome to the Yellow Peril party in downtown Los Angeles.
Now you see why I liked it right. So I love this book so much. I didn't even get the final arc for a long time when I was passing around literally the pages in a binder clip to my colleagues at work. So Justinian there's so many layers to this to this story. It's historical. There's mythology, there's romance if you were a bookseller, as these people are, how would you describe this book to a customer?
I you know, it's really hard to tell experts how to do their job. I thought I would do an attempt and y'all could come afterwards and tell me how it was. But um, so I would say that the Emperor the endless Palace is a romanticized thriller that's genre bending, and it spans 2000 years from ancient China to present day Los Angeles and it's about two men who keep reincarnating as Doom two lovers. It's based on real Chinese history, which is that in four BCE, there was an emperor who fell in love with one of the men in his court, and he proceeded to hand this entire kingdom to this boy, so much so that when they both died young and mysteriously, the first Han Dynasty fell with them. So this is the greatest love story that no one knows. It's been never been told until now. But, you know, I, you know, when I when I came out to my family, I was told that Chinese people can't be gay. So when I heard learned about this emperor and his lover, it was really it was really special to me, because it proves to me that Korean is is an essential part of not just Chinese history, but human history. And thank you. And I would say also that this book, is for anybody who's ever been in a relationship that they love, but also hate and can't escape.
And then let's pass. Thank you, everyone. Good to see just Sybian tonight at the author reception. Thank you.
Now I am so excited to introduce Tony Keith Jr. for his phenomenal memoir inverse. How the boogey man became a poet
so excited about this. Hi everybody. I'm gonna start at the beginning because why not? I came out in the world like this. brights and burning, a brilliant little black star weighing every bit of seven pounds, seven ounces, measuring 19 and a half inches long. So seryan cut right through mom's center, smack dab in the middle of hot July on the 17th day in the year 1981. I look good. I was carefully carved fresh from her flesh at a hospital on a military base and freehold New Jersey will pop was training to be an airman basic, same way same place same space where my sister 10 Mu was born to 17 months before my whole body arrived on fire flaming from the warmth of my mother's womb. Medical records say I was an infant prone to ear infections that raise my internal temperature well beyond a boiling fever. I was three when I bubbled over one Oh 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit made me tugging my lobes a little too hard for Mars comfort. Doctors put some tubes in there to help quiet down the noise. They fell out a few months later while I was dancing circles around my shadow, wound up scarring some tissue on one of my eardrums. Now I'd be tripping on Vertigo is like the world be spinning around if I climb far too high and try to look too straight up toward the sky or stare too deep down beneath the earth's belly a little bit more. I was in eighth grade when the flames broke me scarlet fever spread these sensitive as blood red bumps across my entire body causing some pain to rise up in the middle of my chest. emergency room doctors said mom bought me in just a few moments before the infection punched its way into the second layer of my beating heart last part. Legend has it my being here was a close call to apparently mom 23 pregnant unplanned with me drove a Ford door powder grade dark diplomat with tires that foolishly assumed the tread on their rubber wheels were deep enough to skate smooth on slick black ice during cold winter. Round. The rubber dummies didn't test themselves first crash me and my us we slide like water on the slide like lapo concrete water her belly becomes an inflated safety airbag Branson Oh my bouncing Yeah.
And if you like what you heard, Tony reads the audio for the audiobook and it is amazing. So I highly recommend and Tony I am curious how is writing a novel inverse different from writing an individual poem or even a collection of poems is also
a very good question. I was thinking about the Yeah. So writing poetry for me, you will will learn in this book. I started writing poetry as early as third grade just because a teacher you know was a classroom sort of assignment. But I started writing poetry to myself, dealing with this idea of the boogey man like dealing with racism and homophobia and poverty. And so the technique for writing a memoir, it was just as emotional it is like writing an individual poem. The difference is this to say whole entire story right? A lot of my individual poems are short, and they are a story in themselves. It's the beginning. There's a middle, there's always an end and there's an arc. But in this one I was able to like extend it all out. Right. And I think that's the cool thing about that that writing process is being able to extend the poetry out a little bit longer. Make it last longer feels good. Thank you
I am incredibly honored to introduce you to Sylvie Kathrada for her imperfect book a letter to the luminous deep.
Thank you. So my book is an epistolary novel, and this is an excerpt from a letter in chapter five. Dear scholar Clell, just as you did I shall begin by apologizing for the time it took me to turn to your letter. Isn't it marvelous how much we have in common? I felt so flattered that scholar Henry Cloud, natural historian of great import introduced himself to me so kindly. Then I realized that I never properly introduced myself to you outside of my signature. I am a citizen and most definitively not a scholar despite your kindness to the contrary, I reside within the house of your dreams while living out in existence that is more inescapably mundane, I'm sorry to say then you could possibly imagine. For example, while you might cite the demands of your department as an excuse for not writing I may only say truthfully say that I was what? Watching bubbles accumulate outside the airlock door, checking for leaks everywhere, even in places I've checked already. Waiting for a letter from my sister to arrive though I know she's preoccupied with exploring a place that few will ever visit in their lifetimes, and therefore has been precious little time for correspondence, such as my existence at the deep house.
I'm fully convinced this is like peak bookseller moment for me of getting to gush about one of my favorite books of the year to other booksellers. Amazing, Sylvia, a letter to the luminous deep is a brilliant epistolary novel with a little bit of everything for its readers, including an underwater fantasy world, magical academia and a pen pal romance. How did this story come to be and how did you so perfectly balanced its genre bending elements. Thank
you, Stephanie. Well, as it happened, the pen pal romance came first. When I started drafting this novel, which was over five years ago, now, amazingly, all I had in mind was this dreamlike image of an underwater house inhabited by a cautious and curious person who spent her days writing letters and who then, by chance, or by fate, unexpectedly receives a reply from an ideal correspondent for her, shall we say, with this central relationship guiding me i then let the rest of the world slowly emerge from the depths while editing. I think that the epistolary structure really suits genre blending because I was able to create a variety of narrators and fictional types of documents which let me experiment with elements from science fiction and fantasy of manners. But to some extent, all of that was really just delightful decoration in a way because at its core, I wanted to tell a story in which a reclusive protagonist is not simply a tragically lonely and distant figure. This is rather personal for me as the way my brain works also makes going out in public or say, attending a large conference full of lovely people, very challenging. But if there's one thing that this book is about, it's that communicating and connecting with someone who truly understands you, even if that's only through letters can be most enchanting. So thank you
and now we have a video from dama Laurie Kuku, the author of the fabulous short story collection, nearly all the men in Lagos are mad.
Hi, my name is seminary cuckoo and your phone nearly automated Lagos so much. And I'm so grateful to every bookseller out there. Who has given me a platform to be able to connect with readers worldwide. I'm incredibly thankful for the American Booksellers Association for everyone who has ever believed in me. One of the most important moments of my career so far was when nearly all the main labels are mad with the number of spots on the best selling list in Nigeria, by moving High School stores, one of the biggest bookstores in Africa, so I'm just really grateful. I'm going to be reading from a story in the collection titled International Relations I'm tired of the golf swing nearly all of them I'm not how are we? The standard legals my package contract lying, cheating and occasional scamming alongside stylish crap times lashes also buys or wounds and fake accents? Thank you again.
I'm so grateful.
Hello, I am very excited to introduce Elaine Chau, the author of Ocean's Gadoury.
Thank you chapter one. OSHA wonders how long he's been cheating on her. Adama and the rest of the fastener crew clamor around the noisy restaurant table. It's a throwback to the barbecue restaurants have old even if the charcoal heating the grill is a hologram. The smooth glass walls flash soju adds the fresh face celebrities looking as if they've never even heard of a hangover. Gouda is a riot of languages and the universal sizzle of pork belly on the grill. People enter the restaurant from all over but the listen to the street reads in the same carnivorous incense. HMS Step Two the rhythm of cleans class and a harmony of voices raised in drunken cheer or heartbreak. Ocean loves the Chris snap of lettuce wrapped around me. nestled against steaming rice, pungent twin Jiang and Pekin kanji, there is nothing like sharing food with people around the table, serving personal sized pieces of meat or receiving the offering like a benevolent god. Early in the relationship, ocean introduce a Dhamma to dasa flex, and she regrets it now. She returned from Moto early to join his crew for dinner before they went to the alliance scholar together the next day. It's hard finding the time when they belong to different crews, but they've always made the best of their situation. She never considered it a problem. But clearly Adama has a different opinion.
Thank you. So this debut is an intense and exciting space opera. What kind of research did you find yourself doing as you were writing about the alliance and this universe? And then did you see it as like a distant future for us or like it was a different universe?
Thank you for such a thoughtful question. And also thank you to all of you. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, oceans coterie. Is a very hopeful sci fi and in that way, it's a very hopeful look at a possible future. The Alliance itself is a space agency that comes from a unified Korea. And that also came from a very like what if scenario like what if, even with all the very real sociological, political, cultural differences. What if space travel could be one of the impetus is to unite the two Koreas? As far as research shooted the themes of the book I definitely did as much research for the past elements as the future elements. The past elements of course, we have Haven who is more tambien and practices death rituals. I read a ton of books about death rituals, funeral rituals and cultures from around the world. And for ocean of course, I researched a lot about Kenya, which are the female divers of Korea, and had so much fun doing that. For the future elements, it kind of just went all over the place. Like of course, there was the nitty gritty like what does terraforming look like? Or how does microgravity affect epigenetic changes and algae, but I also looked at Korean fashion through the years and implemented that into like how I designed the space suits. I looked at how the Korean army is organized and just the general feelings around like compulsory conscription. But generally it was a lot of kind of instinctive feeling out of what does the future look like with technology and especially with language because that's such a huge part of the book and also I have to say, I played a lot of the Korean car game coterie with my mom. Just for research.
I bet Thank you.
Hello, it is my absolute pleasure and delight to introduce Allie Millington, author of Olivetti.
Hi, Molly. Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. Elaine, this is really tough act. To follow. So thanks for that. I'm going to be reading the introduction of my debut middle grade novel all of Eddie. It's quite possible you've never spoken to a typewriter before. This is not your fault. humans tend to think we can't understand them. But when you sit still for long enough, there's much you can learn. I should introduce myself. Yes, I do have manners. I'm very well rounded despite my sharp corners in squared shape. I'm called Olivetti but that is nothing more than where I was made. Typewriters aren't given names the way humans are the way books are. Do not get me started on those attention hogs. Many of my kind are called all of Edie yet I am one of the few who are left. Most of my friends have gone extinct. We are like our own breed of dinosaurs except no one goes digging for fossils. Things will be very different. If only our breed could roar. While we might make it look easy, being a typewriter is no picnic. Of course, I've never actually been on a picnic. No one has ever invited me to one. This might be because I do not have a mouth, which seems to be a picnic prerequisite. Humans type out words on us stories, love letters, rants about members of their species. Sometimes they spill their secrets all over our keys. Our silence makes us trustworthy. So far, I've kept my WORD, which is to say I've kept every WORD given to me. Every story I've stored. It's an important job being a protector of memories. Memories are like heartbeats. They keep things alive. They make us who we are
y'all I am not lying when I say this is one of my favorite middle grade novels of all time, we have to read it immediately. So apart from being you know, from the perspective of a typewriter already is focused on the brindle family understanding and working through the everything that happened. What do you hope kids who are reading this and might have their own everything that happened? We'll get out of Ernest and his family story.
That's a great question. Thank you. Um, one topic I wanted to explore and all of Eddie was how even though the brendel's all went through the same hardships together, they each coped with it in such contrasting ways, in this contrast can often be very isolating. And it's easy to feel as if what you're feeling is not valid or that maybe your feelings are wrong. And that's exactly how a 12 year old Ernest feels. He's very introverted. He'd rather stay at home with his collection of dictionaries, and he's just not you know, responding. The same way that his family is to this hardship that they've gone through. So I hope that through earnest struggle to open up, readers can see that they're never truly alone in what they're experiencing. There's always someone out there who can understand how you're feeling, if you give them the chance to there's always someone who is willing to listen if only you speak up. And I hope that in all of Edie readers can find courage to share their voice even if it doesn't sound like anyone else's. Thank you guys so much.
Thank you so much.
I'm very pleased to introduce Scott Alexander Howard. The author of the other Valley.
Thanks. I used to stand alone by the cloakroom door in the morning before school, and again when the lunch bell rang and the others ran out to the field. I walked to the same spot and rested my head on the sharp crags. of stucco. an outcrop of shadow protected the wall from the autumn heat. With folded hands. I stood in the shade, gazing at the backwoods and waiting out today. I took up my station at the rear of the school after Claire's parents moved downtown, leaving me friendless in the neighborhood. I sometimes ran into her at the store or on the Boulevard, but as our mothers chatted, our scant talk revealed that our common ground had been only literal, the adjoining area between our yards. The new neighbors are old and seem to warehouse coats all day. And so at school, I became the girl by the door. Odile who stands by herself, never spoken to and seldom spoken of staring at nothing with eyes like carved wood as motionless as an effigy.
Thank you for reading that that was lovely. Before you became a novelist, your background is in academia, and specifically philosophy and memory and emotion. So how did you transition away from that world and into fiction? And how did you settle on this specific story as a medium for kind of expressing some of those ideas that you had already been thinking about in a different way?
Thanks for prompting me to think about that and thank you all for coming. I think that I mean, honestly, I was kind of a misfit in academic philosophy from the start. The people around me were working on very dry topics, like very dry like I had a friend who is specializing in the metaphysics of holes, which means like, do holes exist or are they the absence of existence? Actually, he got a job in Ohio. I didn't get an update. Or as I got my dissertation topic by from literature, I was reading Proust, I was reading Virginia Woolf and they are full of these emotional descriptions of times passage, you know, to the lighthouse, and the waves are full of the pain of feeling the presence slipping away and becoming memory, you know, in the moment. So I focused on that stuff as a philosopher, but other philosophers didn't really know what to do with me. I had one colleague read my CV and say like, Are you a philosopher? Are you more of an interpretive dancer? And it's I don't want to overstate it like I had some some great supporters, including across the road from Melissa store. But I kind of thought that the best case scenario for me and philosophy is going to be a pretty lonely life. And so then I'm when I left I ended up putting all those same feelings into this novel, you know, they're stitched into the landscape where the past and the future go on existing as physical places that are always tantalizingly close, but just out of sight. So yeah, I guess it it feels natural to me to pursue some of these ideas and fiction because fiction is where they came from. I kind of feel like I've actually come back in from the cold Thank you.
Unfortunately, Victoria Blanco couldn't be here today, even though she really wanted to be here. She is the author of out of the Sierra a story of rara Murray resistance and so as goaded by my lovely crew here, they encouraged me to read a passage so that you can all experience this really unique Lee told story of a family of robbery, people leaving the Sierra their traditional homeland in order to go to Chihuahua city and make a new life for themselves. So this is the mother of the family experiencing one of the certain circles that the random will people are known for. They have a brightly colored vibrant dresses that you can see on the cover, and this is why they do that. Sometimes women stitched one long row of triangles around the skirt. Other times they created designs with upright and inverted triangles, or triangles stacked three rows on top of each other and the triangles are the Sierra, you Kenya told Martha one afternoon Martina one afternoon as she taught her to stitch them onto the fabric. Martina had already likened the designs on your Kenya's boldly colored dresses. So many triangles stitch to the hem of the skirt and the blouse to the peaks, valleys and gorges on the lands they loved. stretching as far as the eye could see. So it was true. The rara Marie women wore the Sierra you had your went on to explain that the bright piping on which the mountains SAT was the path that Roger moody people followed. When they left the path and the mountains formed a circle around the skirt, signifying the returning of blessings Martina was moved. She thought she knew the answer to her question, but she asked it anyway. Why did the rara Moody's ditch the Sierra onto their dresses? To tell the story in the city you Kenya said Martin understood why you when you're meant to tell the story for the younger generations. Please pick up a copy of the book it is so amazing.
Hello, I am beyond blessed and so delighted to introduce Karolina etha for her book Shut up this is serious
I'm not quite as tall. Hi, my name is Karolina. Thank you all for being here. For those of you who have a copy and you'd like to follow along. I'm going to be reading right from the beginning from chapter one. If you really knew about it, you'd know that these mom never even taught her about birth control. That woman holds across so tight in the house. It's what she used to pry open let these legs that's what I tell it the anyway. If you really knew about it, you'd know that despite this let the was pushing to do it with Quinton but if you really knew her like I know her, you know she only slept with him twice before she got pregnant. And the first time didn't even count because he finished before he was inside her. She called me to tell me about it and was like oh, you know he got nervous. You know how it gets. I don't know about any of that. But I popped my gum and said Uh huh. Anyway, if you grew up with lots family like I did, you'd know that her mom is always pinching like these cheeks and calling her but yet that or India. That's to say she's calling let the ugly in a racist Mexican way. She'll be standing there giving let the NDC on and then turn let these palms over praying she'd light into their color. So you'd know why let these still refuses to tell her mom who the father is. Because if you knew about the situation, you'd know that the father Quinton is, God forbid by her family standards black. You'd know that led the chose not to tell her mom because of her mom found out she was going to have a grandchild darker than her own daughter. A black grandchild, Hale has was muddy and will say her mom would shoot herself in the head right then in there. And if you knew that the spa you'd know where the scar on that this eyebrow came from, you know his hands and his mouth and his temper bigger than the sky. When let these bar drinks he goes on and on about what he cannot stand at the top of that list is black. People. And right below that is loose women. But you don't know any of that. And really nobody else does either. If there's anything I've learned since my far left, it's that people think they know somebody, but it turns out nobody knows anybody at all. Thank you
so this book helped heal parts of 18 year old Teresa. I love it so much. Sometimes they get emotional. There's a lot of really heavy topics. But what's one thing that you would like take away from it?
Thank you for saying that. Um, I wrote this book primarily first always with Latina girls in mind and I wanted them to be seen and to be valued and to feel loved. But I also wrote the book with the idea that Latino people and all people but first Latino people would think really critically about their race. You know, as I read from the section, I think I'd never read a book I'd read many books that discussed how discrimination plagues Latinos in this country and generally, but never how we also displace it onto other people specifically to the black community. So I wanted Latino people to think deeply about that and all people as well. And I also wanted to write a book that was a love letter. To my hometown of Oakland. I think Oakland gets this bad rap for being violent. And really, it's this beautiful community that stands with the Latino immigrant population and also with black people. And I think it gets a rap of being violent specifically because of that. So I want people to walk away with a with a beautiful analysis of how gorgeous Oakland truly is. Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
Okay, it is my pleasure to introduce snow globe by saw young Park, which was translated from Korean by using mainly comfort. This book lofty comps are gonna come for this book. The Hunger Games, squid games Snowpiercer, The Truman Show, Moon none are quite calm, but the book is completely deserving of such high praise. To say I loved it would be an understatement. Now there is a video hello booksellers.
I'm so young pork. I'm the author of snow globe. This is a dystopian story of a girl who has chosen to replace the mega store from the world's most watched reality show, stepping into the dark and dangerous secrets of the only one city in the world of constant brutal winter. Here's a quick preview. This is a job you own can do Mr. Baum director char told me dissolving all my complicated feelings. This is my chance to break out of a life that could be lived by anyone. Break out of a life defined by a hamster wheel spinning to nowhere. Only I can correct Harish Final Exit What more is there to fret about check out Snoke love if you want to find out what happens next.
I'm excited to introduce Vanessa Chan, author of the storm we made
Hello everyone. The storm we made came out about six weeks ago and I think I'm finally back to my normal self and feeling a little bit calmer. So I'm really excited to be here. I was feeling completely unhinged about a month ago. fearful of what was to come. Cecily started doing a roll call every evening to make sure each of her three children had made it home. Juju, she would call over the din of dinner preparations, Jasmine Abel. And every evening they answered jujube irritably faced twisted in the seriousness of an eldest child, Jasmine Cheerilee, small feet skittering across the ground like puppies and her middle boy Abel, who worried her the most who would shout, ma Of course I'm here careening toward her in a big loping hug. For a while the system seemed to work. evening after evening as the sun set and the mosquitoes began their nightly chorus she called for her children and they replied, the family would gather at the scratch dining table and tell each other about that day and for a few minutes, listening to Jasmine snort laughing at one of April's theatrical jokes. Watching Joe pulled at her short curls that look so much like Sally's own sesame could forget the severity of their circumstances, the terror of war, the barrenness of their lives. But then on his 15th birthday on the 15th of February, Abel, who had light brown hair so unlike the rest of the siblings, Abel who was ravenous all the time because of the food rationing. Abel, who had grown six inches the previous year and was now taller than everyone in the family had not answered her call. had not made it home from the store. And as the waxy birthday candle melted into able to dry birthday cake Cecily knew bad things happen to bad people. And she was exactly that.
The storm we need has multiple deeply fleshed out and complicated characters. What was it like creating these characters in the story that they are a part of?
Thank you, Francis, for this question. Thank you all for being here. And you know, I got this question sometimes. So what you should know about the store we made is it has two times for point of views and for secondary characters who are mirrors of the fourth point of views. So that's a lot. And you know, writers will ask me like, you know, why did you do that? Should I do that? And I'm like, No, do not do that. It will require you to march around your home mumbling to yourself being really irritated and create like an insane board one of those you see in like procedurals, with like the string and the like paper posted to keep things straight. So if if any of you have um, writing ambitions, don't do it. But you know, I created like, I said, for point of views, Cecily, who's a mother and a spy jujube, who is an eldest daughter, who has like the weight of the world on her shoulders able who's like a very handsome teenage boy very charming and charismatic who gets kidnapped and gets trapped in a labor camp. And Jasmine who's like seven years old, and doesn't have the full context of what's happening during the war and to her family. And I think I wrote this way. And the experience of writing this way was, you know, I said, I joked it was difficult, but it was also really wonderful because it gave me you know, the breadth of the experience is infinite, but it did give me a way to write and learn about a quite significant breadth of humans, right. Mothers, spies, teenage boys, young girls, and beleaguered eldest daughters, which I know a lot about as one myself. You know, they say that books can take the reader to see the world to travel the world and to learn about people. I think that writing in my case, writing a bunch of different characters some like me, some not, also helps me to do that. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Okay, it is now my pleasure to introduce Meghan Lolly, author of That's not my name, which is not only in these introduce pick not only in in these next pick, it is now also a New York Times best seller.
Thank you so much. I'm so book came to me very early days with an image of a girl in a ditch by the side of the road with no memory of who she is or how she got there. And so starting with that seems like a good place. I think I might be dead. I tried to gather my bearings, but I can't see. I feel nothing. Not even my own body. The lack of sensation. The way the silence wraps me in a hook and squeezes, it's unnerving. I want it to stop until the pain comes. It hits like a full body punch. My mind scrambles to catalogue what hurts but it all hurts. My hand twitches against something scratchy beneath me. I'm lying on my stomach and something pointy presses under my ribs. I move my chin and my cheekbone drags against damp earth. It smells like decay and old leaves. Fear kicks up my pulse. I'm outside How the hell did I get here? I tried to look around but my eyelids scrape like my lashes are made of glass and nails. They slam shut before I can see anything. And engine roars and I tend to pain shooting down my arms. My hair blows across my face as a vehicle whips past and then it's quiet again.
Thank you for that. So Megan, as young adult books become more popular increasingly they do not center what actual teen readers are wanting to read. Your book seemed to definitely avoid that pitfall was it part of your process or research to make sure the book appealed to teenagers?
Yeah. I have a 15 year old at home and so early days it was very important that I was writing to the authentic young adult audience for him. But also, I have been writing young adult novels since he was eight months old. And so it's been 15 years of me trying to be as authentic as I could be to the readership that I was writing for. And I think it's really important when you write for young adults that you are writing for young adults. And there is and I love that this book also has adult crossover and I love that adults also are resonating with this story and this girl and and that's amazing, but that's the teen readers that I'm actively writing for every single day and they are always at the front of my mind. When I'm writing. Thank you.
Thank you
Okay,
I'm very excited to introduce a video from author Rachel Chivers. CU author of the wish keepers apprentice which is a joyful early middle grade novel, full of magic wishes and hope. It is perfect for kids who love playful characters and grand adventures.
Hello American Booksellers Association I'm Rachel tourists key author of the wish keepers apprentice which is illustrated by Rachel something. This is a magical story that fictional sci fi time called Littlestone. At the center of the time, there is a wishing fountain and at the start of the story, a very ordinary boy called Felix Jones throws a coin into that fountain. feeling at that magical things didn't happen to people like him. He'd walked past this particular fountain 1000s of times before without any thought of making them wish. But something about this evening felt different besides a penny wasn't worth much. Felix stared at the copper coin in his palm in that moment. To his surprise, he knew exactly what to wish for. Why not? It had to be worth a shot. Felix held his breath and he dropped his penny into the water. This is a story about wishes, friendship, family and the importance of holding on to hope.
Last but certainly not least, is a video from Jesse Ren Marshall author of women in peril which is the second short story collection that made the Indies next list and it is a speculative fiction collection.
Hello, my beloved booksellers. I'm Jesse run Marshall and I'm going to read a little bit from women in peril. Mao was cooking fried eggs on the new stove. It's embarrassing to have men over Ma said She Bangs a pan down to unstick the stuck eggs where you live like pigs. That's why I go to Lowe's said dolly lol was dollies new boyfriend he wasn't an addict and only did oxy on special occasions mod dropped the pan of AES into the space Mary and he declared and said Bon Appetit before she turned to light a cigarette. So look I can call the plumber Marian said between puffs just tell me what's broken the whole damn toilet is broken belly said mom keeps flushing shit down. I do not it's you and your maxi pads. You ma that trashes Marian speaking of trash said and threw something at her oldest daughter. A thick envelope. Not Like the Others. Divorce papers Ma said triumphantly. Thank you and have a wonderful day.
Thank you, everyone. Many thanks to our bookseller committees for all their work to the publishers for supporting their authors and the authors for sharing their work with us today. Most of the author's will be signing now, right outside until 145 or until the next session starts. Don't be late for your sessions but do get these books. And Justinian Wang will be signing at the evening reception tonight. Although his publisher does have some tote bags out there as well. The rest of the books that you heard about today were in the galleon room and that they've been almost completely wiped out. So I hope you got a chance to take a look at them. Thank you again have a good rest of your day.
