If the buzz yesterday felt electric, today's vibe could have been sponosored by Dilaudid. Most of the people I chatted with chalked it up to hangovers or exhaustion, but it seemed like the moment of excitement had passed. After all, it is a trade show, and even though the far corners of the convention center may seem like Siberia, the end is still in sight.
Planning for parties to be today's main event, I went in to BEA a few hours later than yesterday, around two o'clock. My friend Antony van Couvering (Names@Work) and I met for coffee and caught up and laughed over the reluctance of people to embrace the Internet and I told him how my venture capitalist friend told me that lately been the fashion for people in his industry to say, "What's your blink on that?" in homage to Malcolm Gladwell's latest bestseller and we agreed that's so horrible. We also discussed his upcoming trip to Africa and my desire to travel more in general. After he left to return to New York, I met my pal Katherine Lanpher and her friend Brenda Marsh who directs author relations for Barnes & Noble. We enjoyed a relatively brief afternoon break and had a highly intriguing discussion about a project you'll hear more about soon.
We walked around a bit together before Brenda left to attend a panel on "buzz," and then Katherine and I stopped by the Springboard section at Hachette Book Group, where I admired the gorgeous display highlighting her forthcoming debut, Leap Days, which I'm really excited about. We also checked out the fine art publishers D.A.P, Steidl and others. Fall titles to look out for in the D.A.P catalog include Don't Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore edited by Louise Downie and Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin: Pretty Much Everything (Vol. 1) , with text by Bruce Sterling. We also grabbed review copies of The People's Act of Love by James Meek at Grove/Atlantic and Abha Dawesar's That Summer in Paris at Nan A. Talese/Random House. Both sound stellar.
Originally, my plan was to attend some mix of four parties this evening; variously, an Unbridled Books soiree, a party thrown by a consortium of independent publishers, another party dubbed "The Original Party," and, in an anti-climactic bit of news, the Brazilian Girls show presented by Publishers Group West. I had been told by numerous people whom I admire that the PGW party was the party to attend at BEA, but it sounded so two years ago that I found it challenging to feign excitement.
I considered skipping them all, but then I ran into Coffee House Press publicist Lauren Snyder and strolled with her back to her booth to get some galleys of The Exquisite, Laird Hunt's forthcoming novel that I'll be publicizing this fall. While I was there, I was thrilled to get a chance to chat with marketing director Molly Mikolowski, who I'd barely seen thus far. She's got some smooth moves, because despite my determination not to pick up any more books, I left with Selah Saterstrom's The Pink Institution and Gilbert Sorrentino's Lunar Follies.
From there, I decided to take a cab over to Capitol Hill for the Unbridled Books party, where I ran into friends I adore and had a chance to talk more with new faces, including Alan DeNiro, whose new story collection comes out from Small Beer Press soon, and Matthew Cheney, whose Mumpsimus blog is divine. I also caught up with marketing director and general phenom Caitlin Hamilton Summie, who made sure there were refreshments as well as appealing galleys spread througout the bar. Two I couldn't resist slipping into my tote: Rain Village by Carolyn Turgeon and Small Acts of Sex and Electricity by Lise Haines. Feeling rather exhausted, I passed off extra invites and headed home for a quiet dinner and some chill time to the tune of Devendra Barnhart's Nino Rojo album.
Visit Lux Lotus favorite Moleskinerie.com on Monday for my exclusive feature on the Moleskine/Kikkerland Design presence at BEA.
Am loving every bit of this coverage!
Posted by: Elizabeth | May 22, 2006 at 12:39 PM