BTW News Briefs

Trade Show Season Starts

The fall trade show season kicked off last weekend in Portland, Oregon, where members of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association gathered for three days featuring educational programming, special author events, and exhibits.

One of the educational highlights of the show was ABA's conversation on Local First campaigns, moderated by ABA CEO Oren Teicher and featuring Dee Robinson, co-owner of Village Books, a member of Sustainable Connections in Bellingham, Washington; and Mike Roach, co-owner of Paloma Clothing, board member of the Sustainable Business Network of Portland, and president of the Hillsdale Business and Professional Association.

Look for a wrap-up on all of the regional trade shows in Bookselling This Week in October.

Virginia Prison Book Ban Reversed

After protests from community supporters and First Amendment advocates, including the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Books Behind Bars, which was founded by Kay Allison, of Quest Bookshop in Charlottesville, Virginia, is again sending books to Virginia prisoners.

Allison founded Books Behind Bars two decades ago after receiving many requests from prisoners, teachers, librarians, and counselors asking for help in obtaining books and dictionaries for prisoners in Virginia correctional facilities. The program was brought to a halt last month after undisclosed contraband was found in a delivery, as reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

"I am just relieved and very grateful," said Kay Allison, owner and president of Quest Bookshop and the founder of its Books Behind Bars program, told the Dispatch. "We need to get busy and start getting these [backed-up] orders out." The article noted that the program had been donating books to inmates at a rate of 2,500 to 3,000 a month.

Free Speech Groups Protest Yale Censorship of Scholarly Treatise

On September 16, the National Coalition Against Censorship, joined with 11 leading academic, civil liberties, journalism, and free speech organizations, including the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, to send a letter to Yale University officials protesting the school's decision to remove all images of the prophet Mohammed from a scholarly treatise, The Cartoons That Shook the World, by Professor Jytte Klausen.

Klausen's book, due to be published by Yale University Press in early October, examines the violence that erupted in 2005 after a dozen provocative drawings of the prophet Mohammed by Danish cartoonists ignited a firestorm in some parts of the world, fueled in part by clerics and politicians who used them to inflame crowds. Since then, the images have been reprinted and are readily available online.

The groups objected to the university's decision to remove the images based on "an unspecified fear of violence." They also sharply criticized the secretive and unfair process that resulted in the decision to remove the images. "Yale has set a terrible precedent," said Joan E. Bertin, NCAC's executive director, in a statement. "Not only did it abandon principles of free expression and academic freedom, it did so in a way that emboldens those who would use threats of violence to achieve their goals. If a world-class university engages in such behavior, how many other institutions will be cowed into doing the same, or worse?"

The full text of the letter from NCAC and its allies can be found here.

S&S to Handle Andrews McMeel Book Sales to the Trade

Simon & Schuster has announced that effective January 1 it will handle the sales of Andrews McMeel Publishing books to the trade. AMP will continue to sell to the gift channel and will continue to sell its calendar line, except to independent bookstores.

S&S has handled fulfillment for Andrews McMeel for nearly a decade.

Earl Martin Phalen Named New CEO of Reach Out and Read

On September 14, Reach Out and Read (ROR), the national nonprofit that works with doctors and nurses to promote early literacy, named Earl Martin Phalen its new chief executive officer. Phalen, who has more than 16 years of experience in nonprofit leadership, will lead Reach Out and Read from the organization's national headquarters in Boston.

Phalen, a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, served on the education policy group for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and as co-chair of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Partrick's education task force. Phalen is also the founder and chair of Summer Advantage USA, a nonprofit that provides learning opportunities for students during summer months to combat summer learning loss.

NAIBA Announces Books of the Year

This week, the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) announced the winners of its 2009 NAIBA Book of the Year Awards, to be presented at the NAIBA Fall Conference Awards Banquet.

The winners are:

• Fiction: A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick (Algonquin)
• Nonfiction: Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg (Other Press)
• Trade Paperback Original: Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames (Hyperion)
• Picture Book: The Curious Garden by Peter Brown (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
• Children's Literature: If I Stay by Gayle Forman (Dutton)

Rona Jaffe Foundation to Celebrate 15 Years of Writers' Awards

The Rona Jaffe Foundation will honor its annual Writers' Awards winners at a private ceremony on September 24 in New York City. Six emerging women writers have been singled out for excellence by the foundation and will receive awards of $25,000 each. The 2009 winners are Krista Bremer, Vievee Francis, Janice N. Harrington, Lori Ostlund, Helen Phillips, and Heidy Steidlmayer.

The guest speaker at the ceremony will be poet Elizabeth Alexander, author of five books of poetry, including Antebellum Dream Book (2001) and American Sublime (2005), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; two collections of essays; and a play, Diva Studies.