People

Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Alan Greenspan will be the keynote speaker at this year's BookExpo America. Greenspan, whose memoir The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World will be published by Penguin in September, will be interviewed by his wife, Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News. The keynote event will be held at 11:00 a.m.

At its February meeting, the American Booksellers Association's Board of Directors approved the report of the ABA Nominating Committee, chaired by Collette Morgan of Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis. The Committee presented the Board with the names of three director candidates for three-year terms (2007 - 2010) on the Board.

When author Amy Stewart reads and signs at an independent bookstore, she has a knack for making her visit memorable.

Touring a few years ago with her second book, The Earth Moved (Algonquin), Stewart -- who specializes in writing on gardening and on growing things -- showed up at each venue bearing a Tupperware container filled with earthworms.

Ann LaPietra, 73, owner of The Kids' Place in Marshall, Michigan, died last month. LaPietra owned the bookstore from 1986 until its closing in 2006, due to her poor health.

LaPietra was born on June 30, 1933 in Decatur, Illinois, to Robert M. and Virginia (Lipscomb) Yoder. She graduated from Northwestern University's Theater School in 1955 with a Bachelor of Science in Speech.

The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, edited by J. Peder Zane (Norton), features the responses of 125 leading American and British authors who were asked to name their choices for the 10 greatest works of literature of all time, in order of preference.

by Len Vlahos

From December 8 to December 10, Len Vlahos, ABA's education and BookSense.com director, joined the bookselling team at Maria's Bookshop in Durango, Colorado, for a weekend stint as a frontline bookseller. This is his account of magical car rides, a charming Colorado town, and hectic holiday sales days while working at a very successful independent bookstore.

Wayne A. "Rusty" Drugan, the executive director of the New England Independent Booksellers Association from 1992 until his resignation in August due to illness, died on Thursday, December 7, 2006, at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 59.

As a boy in India, Vikram Chandra -- author of Sacred Games (HarperCollins), the number-one January Book Sense Pick -- was surrounded by stories: the traditional tales of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana told him by his aunts and grandmothers; a cornucopia of American, English, and Indian books displayed by