People

The terms of 14 members of the ABA Booksellers Advisory Council (BAC) recently ended at this year's BookExpo America, May 28 - June 1, and the terms of new volunteer booksellers began. The BAC is designed to provide the ABA Board of Directors with a broad cross-section of views from within the community of independent booksellers. The council is composed of 25 members, each of whom serve an average two-year term.

John Burdett wanted to capture a place that hadn't been explored all that much in previous detective thrillers. "I thought Bangkok really hadn't been done the way Los Angeles, New York, and Paris had been done," he told BTW. His original intention was to write a relatively conventional book.

The literature of Los Angeles is written by outsiders.

By Raymond Chandler, for instance, of Illinois, by way of England. By John Fante, from Colorado. By Joan Didion, born in Sacramento.

And now, in the 21st century, by Nina Revoyr: born in Japan and raised in Wisconsin, before moving to L.A. at age nine.

Jay Steele did not expect to win BookSense.com's first-ever Poetry Slam, held on Saturday, May 31, at BookExpo America in Los Angeles. In fact, Steele didn't even intend to read his winning poem, "Trans-Substantiation," a riveting and personal composition about his transsexuality. But he finally did stand up before a crowd of over 100 people to read at the end of the event. "It was a last-minute [decision]," Steele told BTW. "I usually write and hide it."

June 19, 2003, marks the 50th anniversary of the executions of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for "conspiracy to commit espionage." Although the highly publicized case has always been referred to as a trial for treason and high-level atomic espionage -- passing the secret of the atom bomb to the Soviet Union -- those crimes were not charged. No one has ever proven that the Rosenbergs, left-wing, Jewish parents of two young boys, living on the lower east side of Manhattan, passed any classified materials of any kind.

On May 7, Chuck Robinson, owner of Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, was presented with this year's Liberty Bell Award by the Whatcom County Bar Association. The award acknowledges outstanding community service to the legal system by a non-attorney, including encouraging a sense of civic responsibility and contributing to good government.

A member of the Board of Directors of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Robinson served on the American Booksellers Association Board and was its president from 1992 - 1994.

May 4, 2003, marked JoAnn McGreevy's 33rd anniversary as director of the New York University Bookstores. As she plans her retirement at the end of this month, she recalled for BTW her extraordinary first day.

Attorney Theresa Chmara, a partner with the law firm of Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C., has been named the recipient of the 2003 Freedom to Read Foundation Roll of Honor Award. Chmara is general counsel of the Freedom to Read Foundation and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. Chmara was also part of the legal team representing ABA in its lawsuit against Barnes & Noble and Borders.

A number of new volunteer booksellers are joining the American Booksellers Association's Booksellers Advisory Council (BAC), with 12 booksellers starting this June and two starting in January 2004. The BAC is designed to provide the ABA Board of Directors with a broad cross-section of views from within the community of independent booksellers. The council is composed of 25 members, each of whom will serve an average two-year term.

BAC members joining the council in June are:

The American Booksellers Association has announced the lineup for the 2003 Book Sense Reading Room, to be held at BookExpo America on Saturday, May 31, from 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m., in the Los Angeles Convention Center theater. The popular annual event -- a bookseller favorite -- features four outstanding writers reading in a relaxed, intimate setting. In the past, such authors as Paul Auster, Raymond Carver, Kate DiCamillo, Richard Ford, Michael Malone, Alice McDermott, and Ann Patchett have appeared at the Reading Room.

For the past several years, David Walker has worked with ABA in different capacities to help resolve issues regarding trade practices of concern to independent booksellers. Walker recently spoke to BTW about the types of issues he's worked to resolve and the need for booksellers to keep ABA informed of the problems they are encountering.

In 1962 when Carlos Eire and his older brother, Tony, were airlifted out of Cuba to the U.S. in Operation Pedro Pan, they marveled at the force of the takeoff. Ages 11 and 14, they thought how wonderful it would be to have chewing gum again and to take their first sip of Coke in months. They relished their first panoramic view of the ocean as they flew toward a world they imagined from TV shows. And, like all the children being airlifted unaccompanied out of Cuba at the time, they believed they'd see their parents shortly, in a matter of months.