A Festival Grows in Brooklyn Search

Attracting about 10,000 attendees, 75 vendors, and more than 70 authors, the first Brooklyn Book Festival, held on September 16 at the Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza, was such a success that plans are already underway to make it an annual event. The festival was created to celebrate both the borough's rich literary history and its diversity and abundance of contemporary writers. The site of Hotel ABA at BookExpo America 2007 will be the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge, in Brooklyn.

Participating bookstores included Bank Street Bookstore; Book Court; Booksellers; Brownstone Books; Spoonbill & Sugartown; and St. Petersburg Bookstore.

"The first-ever Brooklyn Book Festival proved that nowhere has as many talented and diverse literary voices as Brooklyn," said Eric Demby, communications director for Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. "One of the most-heard comments of the day was, 'I can't believe this event didn't already exist -- it's such a no-brainer to have a Brooklyn book festival.' So we feel like the fest not only boosted the borough's literary reputation, it also improved visibility of Brooklyn authors and helped further establish Brooklyn as a destination for visitors and entertainment unto itself in New York City."

In light of the its success, event organizers hope to present another book festival next year, and will be seeking opportunities that make an annual event possible and feasible, said Demby.

The festival featured three outdoor stages as well as "Reading Rooms" inside the historic Borough Hall, with appearances and readings by authors Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake, Mariner); Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn, Vintage); Rick Moody (Demonology, Little Brown); Edmund White; (The Flaneur, Bloomsbury USA); Colson Whitehead (Apex Hides the Hurt, Doubleday); and Valorie Fisher (How High Can a Dinosaur Count?:... And Other Math Mysteries, Schwartz & Wade); and many more. Programming also included music, a kids' stage, and more than 100 exhibitors, including bookstores, publishers, literary organizations, and more.

Crystal Bobb-Semple of Brownstone told BTW, "It was wonderful. We had one of our best book fairs in terms of sales." She added that the bookstore primarily brought Brooklyn titles to stock their booth. "We really tried to focus on items that had some kind of connection to the borough. It was a narrow selection, but people were excited about it and everything moved."

Top festival sellers for Brownstone were Hunger (Erica Simone Turnipseed, Amistad), and Brown Girl, Brownstones (Edwidge Danticat and Paule Marshall, The Feminist Press at CUNY).

Spoonbill & Sugartown's Quentin Rowan experienced similarly high volume. "I thought the [festival] was great," he said. "It was really crowded.... It was really good sales-wise and really busy. We're located in Williamsburg, so it was good to have a presence at the festival."

Independent publisher Sasquatch Books reported that it had two of its Brooklyn-based authors operating their booth: F. Bowman Hastie III (Portrait of the Dog as a Young Artist: Art From Scratch, by the World's Preeminent Canine Painter); and Gersh Kuntzman (Chrismukkah: The Official Guide to the World's Most-Beloved Holiday). Said Sasquatch's Courtney Payne, "We thought it was unique to have two authors from Brooklyn [at the booth]. I heard that [the festival] was great -- they were singing its praises."

Bobb-Semple looks forward to future festivals and was pleased to see her borough get its literary due. "It's nice to see literature at the forefront in Brooklyn," she said. "There are huge numbers of authors residing and from here. It was great to see all of them in one place. I had one customer ask me what took so long. That was a really good question. Everything came together so nicely and famously, it made you say Brooklyn should have had a book festival long ago." --Karen Schechner with reporting from David Grogan

According to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's office, one in seven Americans has family roots in Brooklyn.

If your family is connected to Brooklyn in some way, Bookselling This Week would like to know. We're gathering stories for a feature in an upcoming edition of BTW. Please send an e-mail describing your relationship to Brooklyn to [email protected].