People

After almost four decades in publishing working to serve writers, Toinette Lippe discovered that a friend’s challenge had turned the tables on her. In April 1999, when Lippe told Joel Fotinos, publisher of the Jeremy P. Tarcher imprint at Penguin Putnam, over dinner at Manhattan’s Sarabeth's Kitchen, that she had decided to leave her full-time job at Random House, "his response was immediate, ‘Then you can write a book for me,’" Lippe recalled in a recent interview with BTW.

ABA has announced the results of the 2002 elections for Board officers and directors. The candidates chosen to serve as ABA Board directors were: Neal Coonerty, owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California; Russ Lawrence, co-owner of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Montana; and Karl Pohrt, owner of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Board members serve three-year terms. Coonerty and Pohrt are currently Board members.

Mavis Gallant On April 17, the annual $30,000 Rea Award for the Short Story was awarded to Mavis Gallant. The Rea Award is the only award in the U.S.

BookExpo America show management announced this week that over 500 authors have agreed to participate in BEA’s highly popular autographing program, an annual convention tradition. The autographing program features over 30 authors signing books at one place, and at one time, for 30-minute or one-hour signing sessions all day, each day of the show. BEA’s autographing area will be located on the first floor of the exhibition hall of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, and will be open on Friday, May 3, and Saturday, May 4.

Phoebe Storrs Stebbins, owner of the Dartmouth Bookstore in Hanover, New Hampshire, died on Wednesday, March 27, at the age of 83. Stebbins had been ill with brain cancer since last July. "She was an inspiration to everybody," said David Cioffi, Dartmouth Bookstore's store manager, and Stebbins's son-in-law.

The title of Elisabeth Hyde's new work of fiction from Macadam/Cage, Crazy as Chocolate, was taken from poet Anne Sexton's line, "Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar." Izzy (née Isabel) narrates this tale of her family, alternating past and present.

Ann Patchett has won the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Bel Canto, which was a Top Ten Book Sense 76 selection last year. The prize awards the writer $15,000, making it the largest juried award for fiction in the U.S.

Make no mistake, notwithstanding its witty title, A Child’s Book of True Crime by Chloe Hooper (Scribner) is definitely not a tale for little ones. This Book Sense 76 March/April selection is a story that mingles animal characters from children’s books with true crime elements -- a gruesome murder, an unexplained disappearance -- and perpetual human dramas -- the search for truth and the loss of innocence.

Dan Jaffe, co-owner of Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma, California, and general manager of the entire group of eight Copperfield’s stores, died this month at the age of 50. The cause was apparently a heart attack, said colleague Tom Montan, who noted that Jaffe died at home sometime after March 16.