Brooklyn Book Festival, 2013 Edition–w/Thirty Photos

Last Sunday, which happened to be my birthday, Kyle and I headed out to the Brooklyn Book Festival, the third year in a row we’ve attended this urban book extravaganza. We had a great time at this event which for us has replaced BEA as the most enjoyable book occasion on our literary calendar. We spent nearly 3 hours in Brooklyn, enjoying the crisp autumn air, blue skies, bright sunshine, and many serendipitous encounters with friendly bookpeople. If you’re in the NYC area, and you’ve never been to the Brooklyn Book festival, I urge you to go next year. It was a great way to spend a birthday, especially because we followed it by having a meal at a new restaurant we were eager to try, A Taste of Persia, covered yesterday on this blog. All the photos in this post were taken by Kyle Gallup.

: Brooklyn Arts Press

: Peter Miller (c.) bookseller at Freebird Books, Brooklyn and Publicity Director, Liveright

: Some of Freebird’s New York titles.

: AntiBookClub, an indie press in Brooklyn, has a new memoir by Andrei Codrescu.

: Codrescu’s new book, BiblioDeath, is a handsome edition in a cardboard slipcase.

: Lit magazine Armchair Shotgun raffled off a working typewriter. We bought a ticket, but it was won by a college student.

: National Book Foundation asked “What are you reading?”

: Alana Wilcox is with Coach House Press from Toronto. They have a good line of urban studies titles.

: We picked up copies of Andrew Cotto’s two novels, Outerborough Blues and the Domino Effect. Kyle and I enjoyed talking with him.

: Dennis Johnson (l.) of Melville House, indie Brooklyn publisher.

: I love the look of Melville House’s novella series. Like mid-century Penguins, lovely color, paper, and type.

: Cotton Tenants is James Agee’s original version of the work that became “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.”

: With Valerie Merans of Melville House. I enjoyed visiting with Valerie and her husband, Dennis Johnson.

: With Ira Robbins, rock n’ roll writer and proprietor of TrouserPress.com. In the 1980s, I was Ira’s editor for one edition of his Trouser Press Record Guide.

: A book with my name on it, from Fordham University Press.

: Two Dollar Radio is an indie press in Granville, Ohio, where Denison College is located. I love their name.

: Penguin’s sales kiosk is a truck with flaps that open down for access to the books.

: We saw these titles at the booth of Feral House + Process Media

: Also from Feral House

: During the ’70s, Moondog was a presence on NY’s avant garde music scene, and regularly seen on Gotham streets in his Viking garb.

: Tara Murphy of Biblioasis from Windsor, Ontario. I picked up a copy of the music issue of their lit magazine, Canadian Notes & Queries, with a cover done by notable illustrator, Seth.

: From Biblioasis, Canadian Notes & Queries lit mag’s Music Issue, with articles about Al Tuck, Leonard Cohen, and John Fahey. Cover art by Seth.

: The novel “Farmer’s Almanac” is organized like a real almanac. We won a copy at the booth of Emergency Press.

: A skeptical glance from a staffer with Holy Trinity Bookstore.

: In the same row of booths as Holy Trinity Bookstore was the stand of the Center of Inquiry, an organization promoting “reason, science, secular values.”