#2 The Heartland Fall Forum

I’ve been back from the Heartland Fall Forum (a regional booksellers’ conference) in Minneapolis for more than a week already, and I’m still buzzing with the excitement of that show. There are so many terrific fall books!

At one of the sessions, where Midwest authors spoke to a room full of booksellers about their new books, Peter Geye, author of The Lighthouse Road, asked, “How do you thank people for making a dream come true?” So I guess it’s no surprise that Lighthouse Road was the first book I read after the conference, and I’m currently struggling to write just the perfect shelf tag to hang under it on my staff picks shelf. Set in northern Minnesota near Lake Superior, it tells two tales, one of a woman and the other of a man, 30 years apart, who happen to be mother and son. It’s a wonderful book, and I can’t wait to hand sell it in the store!

And I just finished reading Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub, another author who spoke at that session. The book is set, at least in part, in Door County, Wisconsin, and involves both community theater and the Golden Age of Film—what a great combination! The main character is the youngest daughter of a family that runs a community theater who leaves for Hollywood after the tragic death of a family member. I really enjoyed the book, and it would also be on my staff picks shelf, but one of my colleagues at WCF beat me to the punch and already has it on hers. Darn!

I also heard readings by Jami Attenberg, from her new book The Middlesteins, Julia Pandl, from Memoir of the Sunday Brunch, Jim Heynen from The Fall of Alice K., and Michael Perry, who not only read from his new book Visiting Tom but also told some hysterical and heartwarming anecdotes about being a stay-at-home dad (while trying to write!!).

As wonderful as it is to discover new writers, reading new books by old favorites is a special pleasure. I’m excited that many of my favorite writers have new books coming out this fall—among them: Zadie Smith’s NW, Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, Emma Donoghue’s short story collection Astray, and Mark Halperin’s In Sunlight and in Shadow, which are already out, and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, which will be out soon.

Lynn
Women & Children First
Chicago