The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association and the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance again hosted New Voices, New Rooms, their joint conference, which was held over the weekend at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Va. The conference highlighted a range of authors and new books (see below!), featured all kinds of opportunities for booksellers to talk shop, and emphasized solutions and strategies for dealing with the many challenges facing bookstores, including book bannings, inflationary pressures, and more. As NAIBA president Hannah Oliver Depp of Loyalty Bookstores, Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring, Md., put it at the association's annual meeting, "Our rights are under attack. But we fight for people to be able to read what they love." Both she and American Booksellers Association CEO Alison Hill, who also spoke, reminded booksellers that they can attend school board meetings, write online letters, and work at the school, city, and state level to show up and be heard.

Welcome to NVNR: (from l.) Nicki Leone, community administrator, SIBA; Candice Huber, membership coordinator, SIBA; and Kit Little, executive administrator, NAIBA, greeted booksellers on the opening day of the conference.

Moderator Bunnie Hilliard (center), Brave + Kind Bookshop, Decatur, Ga., zeroed in on the contributions of women in the formation of the present-day United States during Friday's Power and Politics luncheon, when she interviewed authors (l.) Juanita Tolliver (A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisolm and Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics, Hachette, February 10, 2025) and Rebecca Graham (Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany, Citadel/Kensington, January 21, 2025).

Friday night's Indie Press Authors Reception offered booksellers the chance to catch up with one another, mingle with authors, and get books signed. Dava Sobel signed copies of The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science (Atlantic Monthly Press, Oct. 8) alongside her editor, George Gibson.

V Efua Prince (r.) signed her book Kin: Practically True Stories (Wayne State University Press) for Kelly Rivera, Crooked Shelf Bookshop, Lewistown, Pa.

Andi Richardson, Fountain Books, Richmond, Va., cast her secret ballot for the best conditions for reading a book (Day vs. Night; Coffee vs. Tea, etc.).

For Saturday's Genre Book Buzz, booksellers could choose from a variety of themed tables (YA, fantasy, horror, romance, BIPOC, etc.) to talk about titles submitted by publishers, how they organize and market the section in their stores, or anything else on their minds. At the Cookbooks discussion, Doug Robinson (Eagle Eye Books, Decatur, Ga.) donned a chef's hat to lead the conversation. Robinson, a craftsman, explained how he made a wooden "Cooking Station" in his store to host cooking demos by cookbook authors.

Binc executive director Pam French (r.) announced that Binc had raised $2,970 from booksellers attending NVNR. Suzanne Lucey (Page 158 Books, Wake Forest, N.C.) won Binc's Heads or Tails game, and will donate her $250 winnings to New Kids on the Books Literacy Project, a cause that her bookstore supports. (photo: Ryan Grover)

Authors figured prominently in the first full day of programming at New Voices, New Rooms. Panel themes included humor, horror, and fiction sprung from the South.

Laughing While Reading
Julie Wernersbach (Hive Mind Books, a traveling bookstore based in Brooklyn, N.Y.) thoughtfully moderated the "Laughing While Reading" panel, featuring two stand-up comics making their book debuts. Scott Seiss (who went viral with his "Angry Retail Guy" posts) channeled his sometimes degrading experiences as an IKEA customer service employee into his book, The Customer Is Always Wrong (Harper Celebrate, Sept. 10). In the book, Seiss says the things you'd occasionally like to say to the customer. Someone begins a complaint, "I've been a customer here for 40 years..." and you respond, "Oh good, then you'll be dead soon," Seiss quipped. In his comedy routines, Seiss does 50 minutes of stand-up, then 10 minutes with his audience, asking them for their worst work stories. One comedy-goer's tale: "My favorite co-worker got arrested for selling cocaine through the drive-thru window." Artist Johnny Sampson's illustrations add another layer of humor. Seiss hopes the book can provide "stress relief" in the break room. (Seiss maintains he's "more polite in real life" than his character in the book.)

Humor authors Scott Seiss (l.) and Phil Hanley with moderator Julie Wernersbach.

"I'm extremely dyslexic," said Phil Hanley, also a stand-up comedian making his debut, with his memoir Spellbound (Holt, March 18, 2025). "I started in comedy because I didn't have a lot of options." He had no idea what was happening in school. "There were words on the page; that's all I knew," he explained. "I cannot identify a symbol with a sound." But leaving the building for recess was "like walking out at The Tonight Show." He loved the Grateful Dead from the time he was a kid (and later learned frontman Bob Weir is dyslexic): "Each song begins at a jumping-off point, goes as far away as it can, then comes back," Hanley said. "That's what the best comedy does." He got teary speaking of his gratitude toward his mom as he struggled to find his way. It took him six years to write Spellbound. Today he is a big supporter of Eye to Eye, which focuses on student-centered solutions to educating kids with dyslexia, ADHD and other learning challenges.

Horror Writers
The tension between the way things seem on the surface and what lies beneath it emerged as a potent source of horror in a discussion of books by Jill Baguchinsky (So Witches We Became, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), Linda Codega (Motheater, Erewhon/Kensington, Jan. 21, 2025), and Andrew Joseph White (Compound Fracture, Peachtree, Sept. 3), expertly teased out by moderator Andi Richardson (Fountain Bookstore, Richmond, Va.). Baguchinsky, a Floridian who admits to being a "childless cat lady," set So Witches We Became on a private island off the coast of Florida, where an unexpected guest interrupts a group of high school girls on vacation. The author was tired of watching folks "making excuses for certain people and blaming victims for things," Baguchinsky said. "That's all in there."

Horror authors (from left) Jill Baguchinsky, Linda Codega, Andrew Joseph White, and moderator Andi Richardson.

Linda Codega's Motheater takes place on the West Virginia/Virginia border, where she said there's a sense of acceptance around mining: "You can't point fingers at any one person or industry. It's a very strange and nuanced area of the world." The book straddles two timelines--the late 1800s and the present day--and draws on "traditional ideas of witches." A woman whose best friend dies in a coal mine is determined to find out what happened. She discovers a half-drowned woman in a mine slough, claiming to be a witch of Appalachia. "Queer horror is about power subversion," Codega said. "There are things in the dark, and you are not paranoid."

"Horror was the only place I felt seen," said Andrew Joseph White. The only place he saw gender dysphoria and autism depicted was in monsters. White's third novel, Compound Fracture, begins after the 2016 election, when the 16-year-old hero is nearly killed. He gets drawn into a 100-year-old controversy in Twist Creek, W.Va., centered on a miners' rebellion that ended in murder by law enforcement. "So much of the history of West Virginia is rooted in social activism," White said, adding that young people "will have to be the changemakers." As the three authors discussed other kinds of books they'd like to write, White pointed out that "horror is parasitic: if you put horror in a romance, it immediately becomes a horror book."

Southern Fiction
"What makes a book Southern?" Lyn Roberts (Square Books, Oxford, Miss.) asked a panel of four Southern writers. Terah Shelton Harris, who spent a semester studying Faulkner, and whose book Long After We Are Gone (Sourcebooks Landmark) was inspired by his As I Lay Dying, did not miss a beat. "Race, religion, sex, and class," Harris said. Terry Roberts (The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape, Turner, Oct. 1) quipped, "Pat Conroy's South is not my South." He added, "All great works of 20th-century Southern fiction have a dead mule in it." Jamie Quatro (Two-Step Devil, Grove, Sept. 10) said Southern fiction lives at "the intersection of spirituality and sexuality," where "thou-shalt-nots meet permissiveness." Charles B. Fancher said it's the sense of place that's key: "The place you come home to, that nurtures you, and where you're in conflict." He cited James Lee Burke as one of the best when it comes to place.

Southern writers (l.-r.) Terry Roberts, Terah Shelton Harris; Jamie Quatro, and Charles B. Fancher, with moderator Lyn Roberts.

Harris's Long After We Are Gone quite literally centers on place: the ancestral North Carolina lands of the Solomon family after the death of their father, whom the four surviving children refer to as King Solomon. Harris examines the issues surrounding heir property (the division of land among heirs that makes families vulnerable to wealthy investors who pressure individual family members to sell), which particularly affect Black families in the South. The narrative moves among the viewpoints of the four, revealing complex dynamics and well-guarded secrets.

Asheville, North Carolina's Grove Park Inn provides the backdrop for a tale of "prostitution and politics," as Terry Roberts put it, set 100 years ago, in The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape. Roberts's third entry in what he calls an "accidental" series stars private investigator Stephen Robbins, here tracing a Jack-the-Ripper figure killing local prostitutes. Robbins's investigation of the naked corpse of a college girl, discovered in the Inn, exposes the societal divide between rich and poor.

An unlikely duo connects--a 70-year-old outsider artist who paints his visions rescues a 14-year-old sex traffic victim--in Jamie Quatro's Two-Step Devil. The artist sees the teen, zip ties on her wrists, in a car in an abandoned gas station and believes he must save her. In describing the book, Quatro cited Ann Patchett's mother's take on Commonwealth: "None of it happened, and all of it is true." Quatro said, "They're all me: the 70-year-old outsider artist, the 14-year-old sex traffic victim, and the devil."

In a similar vein, Charles B. Fancher began Red Clay as narrative nonfiction about his great-grandfather. Readers first meet Felix as an eight-year-old enslaved boy. The tales started as "family anecdotes told to me, and then filtered through me." The book begins as the Civil War draws to a close and continues into the Reconstruction era and the start of Jim Crow. He changed the approach from nonfiction to a novel because "at some point, I realized there were greater truths to be told." Perhaps that is what makes Southern fiction. Grounded in the truth of a place and its people, novels allow the greater truths to be told. --Jennifer M. Brown   

Some good news from the Bay Area: the GoFundMe campaign to help East Bay Booksellers, Oakland, Calif., rebuild after a July 30 fire destroyed its building reached its goal of $200,000 late last week. "Just jaw-dropping stuff," owner Brad Johnson wrote on the GoFundMe page. "All of this will go toward the immediate needs of paying booksellers their full wage and benefits, but also as we start conceiving of both a temporary spot to land and (one hopes!) an eventual triumphant return to the spot of old. It's all so daunting, but you're helping make it much more than a wish."

Johnson has now increased the campaign goal to $250,000. (The total donated is now about $210,000.) He said the move felt "weird" but makes sense because there are several upcoming fundraising events happening. A new one is being held this coming Sunday, August 18, at 6:30 p.m. at Gilman Brewing Company in Berkeley: the literary fundraiser for East Bay Booksellers features Mac Barnett, Jasmine Guillory, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, José Vadi, and Carvell Wallace, who will be reading. Also raffle items are available from Farley's Coffee, Pegasus Books, McSweeney's, Spectator Books, Transit Books, Two Lines Press, University of Texas Press, and more.

The other was scheduled earlier: today poet Daniel Borzutzky is reading from his new collection, The Murmuring Grief of the Americas (Coffee House Press), with guests Rachel Galvin and Tongo Eisen-Martin, also at the Gilman Brewing Company. The books being sold at the event have been donated to East Bay Booksellers, so purchases are highly beneficial to the store. Johnson noted that Eventbrite says the event is sold out, but there is room. "We had to set a capacity, but there will be standing capacity, too. And if we achieve that, hell, I want to see and say hi to you on the sidewalk!"

Susan Watt, a veteran publisher and HarperCollins editor-at-large, has died, the Bookseller reported, adding that she was one of the longest-serving publishers in the industry, with a career that lasted more than 60 years.

Her first job in the book business was at Blackwell's bookstore in Oxford when she was in college. Watt went on to worked at publishers in both the U.K. and U.S., including Fontana, Michael Joseph, HarperCollins, and Quercus. Her longest publishing collaboration was with Bernard Cornwell, with whom she shared a 40-year publishing partnership.

"Susan was an exceptional editor and person," said HarperCollins U.K. CEO Charlie Redmayne. "Respected and admired by her many authors, she also influenced and inspired so many publishing friends and colleagues. We were privileged that Susan spent so much of her career with us here at HarperCollins and was with us right up until her final days. I will always be indebted to her for putting a copy of Azincourt in my hand ahead of a long trip to the U.S. and thereby introducing me to the incredible world of Bernard Cornwell. We will miss her greatly and our thoughts are with her friends and family."

Cornwell observed: "To be one of Susan's authors was to have her friendship and passionate support, and, like so many others, what success I have enjoyed was mostly owed to Susan's enthusiasm, judgment, and generosity. I have not lost an editor, but a dear friend."

Author Tracy Chevalier added: "Susan acquired Girl with a Pearl Earring for HarperCollins, clearly seeing something in it that perhaps the rest of us didn't--myself included. I will always be grateful for her solid grounding in history and her gentle but persistent editing that made that book and several subsequent novels better."

In a response to the wave of book bannings and censorship efforts in schools, bookstores, and libraries, Open Road Integrated Media is launching the Free Voices Geo-Targeting initiative, a marketing service that uses geo-targeting to enable challenged works to be discovered and purchased even in communities where book bans are widespread.

The initiative offers publishers a marketing solution aimed at the 10 states that have the highest frequency of titles targeted for book bans, adjusted for their number of residents, and meeting a minimum population threshold: Texas, Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Utah, Iowa, Idaho, and Nebraska.

Each enrolled title will be featured in four weeks of promotions that will reach highly targeted segments of "power readers." Publishers will have the option to overlay an extra segment of readers located in a specific state or region, including areas where book bans are especially prevalent and where specific books are challenged.

Open Road CEO David Steinberger commented: "The First Amendment and the right to free expression applies to every community in this nation. With Free Voices Geo-Targeting, we are placing a special emphasis on reaching places where readers may find their access to books restricted."

Open Road chief marketing officer Peter McCarthy added: "Our message to publishers is that if there is anywhere in the nation where readers are being blocked from getting your book, Free Voices Geo-Targeting can help."

Dominique Raccah, publisher & CEO of Sourcebooks, commented: "This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson is the third most challenged book in America today, and among the most banned. I'm grateful that Open Road is helping to make this important book more accessible to readers. We're excited about geo-targeting as a next step in enabling readers to find and read books wherever they live."

A portion of all proceeds from Free Voices Geo-Targeting will be donated to the Freedom to Read Foundation.

Kaitlin Kneafsey has been promoted to associate director of publicity, from assistant director of publicity, at Penguin Young Readers.

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Elise Damasco has joined the school & library marketing team at HarperCollins Children's Books as coordinator. She was previously an advisory specialist at the Skokie (Ill.) Public Library.

Crick, Crack, Crow! by Janet Lord, illustrated by Julie Paschkis (Margaret Quinlin Books/Peachtree).

Today:
CBS Mornings: Ashley Graham, author of A Kids Book About Beauty (DK Children, $19.99, 9780593847107).

Good Morning America: Caroline Chambers, co-author of What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking (Union Square, $35, 9781454952718).

Fresh Air: Joe Moore, author of White Robes and Broken Badges: Infiltrating the KKK and Exposing the Evil Among Us (Harper, $30.59, 9780063375406). He will also be on Good Morning America.

The View repeat: Jessica Biel, author of A Kids Book About Periods (DK Children, $19.99, 9780593847091).

Also on the View: Helen Rebanks, author of The Farmer's Wife: My Life in Days (Harper Horizon, $29.99, 9780785290483).

Sherri Shepherd Show repeat: Whoopi Goldberg, author of Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me (Blackstone, $28.99, 9798200920235).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Amanda Litman, author of Run for Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself (Atria, $18.99, 9781501180446).

Also on GMA: Julianne Hough, co-author of Everything We Never Knew: A Novel (Sourcebooks Landmark, $23.99, 9781464235719).

CBS Mornings: Demi-Leigh Tebow, author of A Crown that Lasts: You Are Not Your Label (Thomas Nelson, $29.99, 9781400343584).

Today Show: Hilton Carter, author of Living Wild: How to Plant Style Your Home and Cultivate Happiness (CICO Books, $45, 9781800652125).

Late Night with Seth Meyers: Simon Rich, author of Glory Days: Stories (Little, Brown, $28, 9780316569002).

Allison Williams (M3GAN, Fellow Travelers) will star in Regretting You, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover's 2019 novel, Deadline reported. Directed by Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars), the project will be written by Susan McMartin.

The news hit as Sony’s theatrical release of Hoover's It Ends With Us adaptation, starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, was in the midst of a big opening weekend, Deadline noted. In addition, an adaptation of her 2018 novel Verity, from writer Hillary Seitz and producers Nick Antosca and Alex Hedlund, is currently in development. 

The winners of the 2024 Hugo Awards, sponsored by the World Science Fiction Society and announced during a ceremony at Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon for Our Futures, are:

Best Novel: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (Tordotcom)
Best Novella: "Thornhedge" by T. Kingfisher (Tor)
Best Novelette: "The Year Without Sunshine" by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny magazine, November-December 2023)
Best Short Story: "Better Living Through Algorithms" by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, May 2023)
Best Series: Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie (Orbit US)
Best Graphic Story or Comic: Saga, Vol. 11 written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
Best Related Work: A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith (Penguin Press)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, screenplay by John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein and Michael Gilio, directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Paramount Pictures)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: The Last of Us: "Long, Long Time," written by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, directed by Peter Hoar (Naughty Dog/Sony Pictures)
Best Game or Interactive Work: Baldur's Gate 3, produced by Larian Studios
Best Editor Short Form: Neil Clarke
Best Editor Long Form: Ruoxi Chen
Best Professional Artist: Rovina Cai
Best Semiprozine: Strange Horizons by the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective
Best Fanzine: Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, editors Roseanna Pendlebury, Arturo Serrano, Paul Weimer; senior editors Joe Sherry, Adri Joy, G. Brown, Vance Kotrla
Best Fancast: Octothorpe by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty
Best Fan Writer: Paul Weimer
Best Fan Artist: Laya Rose
Lodestar Award for Best YA Book: To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey)
Astounding Award for Best New Writer (sponsored by Dell Magazines): Xiran Jay Zhao

Architect and emeritus professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, Witold Rybczynski (How Architecture Works; Now I Sit Me Down) believes cars are "cultural artifacts" whose design reflects and enriches the times. This idea becomes a stimulating springboard into The Driving Machine, where, with exuberant insight, Rybczynski offers an intriguing, cross-continental history of the evolution of automobile design over 150 years. He also shares stories of the many cars he has owned over five decades.

Rybczynski creatively compares and contrasts car designs past and present. He launches his thorough yet concise examination in 1967, when he purchased his first vehicle, a Volkswagen Beetle--the "people's car" created in 1938 in response to Adolf Hitler's "national policy to motorize Germany." The Beetle would become the world's longest-running automobile model, and it might not have been created without the inception of the first successful internal-combustion engine, in the Benz Patent-Motorwagen--a three-wheeled, carriage-shaped motorcar designed by Carl Benz in 1885.

Throughout history, car designs have built on prior inventions. Vehicle power evolved from steam to gas-fueled to electricity. It was Ferdinand Porsche who developed one of the earliest "hybrid" vehicles, which employed an electric motor backed up by an internal-combustion engine. Porsche is just one example of how creative ingenuity led to widespread, worldwide car ownership as vehicles eventually became more budget-friendly and, later, were mass-produced on every continent. The car design evolution continues today after being spurred on by the likes of innovative automotive engineering designers including Henry Ford, Walter P. Chrysler, Preston T. Tucker, and Tesla's designer, Franz von Holzhausen.

Designing cars requires "balancing technical demands and human needs... with aesthetics and taste." Thus, Rybczynski traverses all aspects of automotive technology--form and function--as well as car culture. Early car design mutated into more passenger-focused vehicles, giving way to sports/race cars and economy cars, station wagons, pickup trucks, SUVs, and minivans. In addition, car ownership ultimately conveyed prestige, thorugh names such as Studebaker, Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and electric cars such as the contemporary Prius and Tesla.

The lively charm of this accessible, enjoyably mapped-out narrative is further enriched by Rybczynski's well-crafted drawings of referenced cars. And he seamlessly weaves historical facts with personal, passionate car-themed stories and opinions. Automotive enthusiasts and general readers alike will be equally enthralled. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Shelf Talker: A comprehensively researched, highly entertaining examination of all aspects of automobile design over 150 years.