People

Renowned children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak died on Tuesday, May 8, in Danbury, Connecticut, from complications of a stroke. He was 83.

The American Booksellers Association’s 2012 Board of Directors election results are now final.

After more than 25 years at New York’s Bank Street Bookstore, Beth Puffer retired as the store’s director at the end of April. 

The American Booksellers Association announced this week that Neil Strandberg, a longtime staff member at Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store, would be joining the association in the newly created position of Director of Member Technology, on Monday, May 7.

Economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur Michael Shuman discusses some of the ways in which community members can shift their investments from Wall Street to Main Street and effectively revive the country’s sinking economy.

Ann Patchett, the 2012 Indies Choice Award winner for Most Engaging Author, has been named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Herbert Joseph Houlihan, a past president of the American Booksellers Association, died on April 11, 2012, in Lexington, Kentucky.

Award-winning, bestselling author Richard Russo will be the featured speaker at the opening plenary session at ABA’s Day of Education, on Monday, June 4, at BEA. Also participating in the hour-long, interview-style opening event will be noted broadcaster and author Lynn Sherr.

Last week, Betsy Burton, the co-owner of  The King’s English Bookshop and an ABA Board member, spoke in support of sales tax fairness at the International Council of Shopping Center’s Strategic Leadership Summit and the American Independent Business Alliance 2012 Conference.

The galvanizing experience of Ann Patchett’s keynote address at Winter Institute 7 can now be heard in a downloadable audio file. 

ABA’s Board of Directors has named three director candidates to stand for election to three-year terms on the Board, beginning June 2012. Under ABA’s Bylaws, bookstore members may submit  petitions to have the names of additional candidates added to the ballot.

More than 900 children and teens — aka Nerdfighters — participated in a recent event featuring John Green (The Fault in Our Stars, Dutton Juvenile) and his brother, Hank Green, that was hosted by Washington, D.C.’s Politics and Prose.

At this year’s National Book Awards ceremony, fiction winner Jesmyn Ward thanked Mississippi independent booksellers for helping Salvage the Bones find its readership. Here, Ward talks about the role of indies in advocating for her work, her Mississippi background, and her upcoming memoir.

Francis W. “Steve” Stephenson, the founder of Steve’s Sundry, Books and Magazines in Tulsa, Oklahoma, died on November 22 at the age of 93.

Emily Adams, buyer and book club coordinator at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Washington, has been named the winner of the second annual Joe Drabyak Frontline Fellowship, sponsored by Workman Publishing.