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The Press at the Book Expo

By on June 13, 2012

The Penn Square Press made its first appearance at the 2012 Book Expo America in New York City last week. This is a huge extravaganza with hundreds of exhibitors in all areas of the book business crammed into the vast Jacob K Javits Center on 11th Avenue.  This was no Mom-and-Pop operation. Pulitzer Prize winners, pundits and many of their readers flooded the halls.  We got to hear Steven Colbert live (he’s just as funny in person, and just as intelligent) before the doors opened one morning.

Thanks to the Mystery Writers of America and its Executive Secretary Margery Flax, we had copies of Final Cut: Murder at Jackson Hole there and D. T. Barton himself to sign them. The copies went fast, and the compliments on the look of the cover and the setting were many. Very gratifying.

Meanwhile I travelled around the exhibits, listening to Walter Moseley speak and chatting up Russian, Chinese, Korean, German, English and small press reps who were there. Inspiring! My feet were flat as flagstones by the time I left and just as nimble. Spent my nights at the Algonquin, site of the famous Round Table. If Alexander Woollcott and Dorothy Parker’s ghosts were attending, I did not see them. Maybe they were downstairs with dozens of book people haunting the bars with the ghosts of Benchley and E B White. My loss. Wit is in short supply these days. Good writing takes a back seat to celebrity tell-alls and political pile-driving. We here at the Press plan to make amends. Tom

About Tom Godfrey

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