Steve Semken, founder and publisher of Ice Cube Press, has been focusing on Midwestern books from his base in Iowa for more than 35 years. He is a familiar face at the Heartland Fall Forum, but this year he ventured further west during trade show season to help showcase new titles that have a different regional theme at the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association's FallCon in Denver, Colo.
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| At MPIBA's FallCon: (l.-r.) authors Caryn Carruthers, Betsy Gaines, Stephen Collector, bookseller Dara Landry, Annette McGivney | |
"This fall was my first Mountains & Plains Independent conference, and after 35 years of publishing, the timing could not have been better," Semken said. "I came to Denver with Stephen Collector's new No Do-Overs in Paradise: Journeys Through Wild Places and Inner Landscapes, set across every corner of the Mountains & Plains region; and our new reprints of Russell Chatham's Dark Waters and The Angler's Coast. All three books carry the West in their bones, and FallCon was the right room to launch them."
On the final morning of FallCon, Colorado author Collector was one of several writers featured at The Deep Dive: Nonfiction Author Speed Round Breakfast, which had the guest authors present their titles by answering a series of rapid-fire questions about themselves and their work to attending booksellers.
Among those participating were (pictured, l.-r.) authors Caryn Carruthers (Bowl Theory, The Collective Book Studio); Betsy Gaines Quammen (This Haunted Land, Torrey House Press); Stephen Collector (No Do-Overs in Paradise); event host and bookseller Dara Landry of Class bookstore in Houston, Tex.; and author Annette McGivney (Plastic Shaman, Torrey House Press).