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Third Day: Wednesday, 05/25

It turned out that, indeed, there was another area of the exhibit that had more publishers of literary fiction than the area I’d previously visited.  By the end of the day I had a bag full of so many goodies I had to ship them home.  First, I stopped (again) by Europa Editions’s table because I’d been told that they would give books away.  I had the unexpected luck of meeting the publisher himself, Kent Caroll, who let me choose two novels.  I picked The Worst Intentions by Alessandro Piperno and The Art of Losing by Rebecca Connell.  Then, I found Other Press, another publisher I like not only because of the authors they publish but also because these days they are one of the rare publishers that respect and promote their authors.  I know a very good writer, Michelle Hoover, who had a great experience with them, and whose novel, The Quickening, I highly recommend.  The people there were all friendly and let me pick whatever I wanted among their advanced reading copies.  I took Alberto Moravia’s Two Friends, and the intriguing Calling Mr. King by Ronald de Feo, both forthcoming in September.  And, finally, I made a discovery: Biblioasis, an independent publisher from Canada.  They have just published The Accident by Mihail Sebastian, a very interesting Romanian writer from the first half of the 20^th century.

With my bag full I headed for the autographing table of Carmela Ciuraru, author of Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms.  As on Tuesday, the autographing area (which included about thirty tables) was swarming with dozens of passionate readers who were patiently waiting in line to get a signature from an author.  I asked an organizer where I could buy the book and...I found out that the books were FREE.  Well, that explained the passion of all those readers.