{"id":30439,"date":"2019-08-06T08:36:49","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T12:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=30439"},"modified":"2019-08-06T08:36:49","modified_gmt":"2019-08-06T12:36:49","slug":"melting-cupcakes-and-beautiful-disasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=30439","title":{"rendered":"Melting Cupcakes and Beautiful Disasters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, we had a jam-packed offsite event weekend planned:\u00a0a\u00a0Friday evening launch party for two of our favorite Vermont authors whose books were releasing on the same date, and afternoon events on both Saturday and Sunday for a visiting author from out of town. While one of them went with\u00a0barely a hitch and the other had major hiccups, both were joyful celebrations that built community.
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\nThe Friday launch party was a dream. Young adult author Chris Tebbetts and picture book author\/illustrator Liza Woodruff (whom we also claim as an excellent Flying Pig staff member) were throwing the party at an art studio a few miles away.
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\nIt was a private launch, since space was limited to 150 or so, and besides, it’s nearly impossible to successfully create a public event\u00a0combining books\u00a0aimed at 4-to-6-year-olds and 14-to-17-year olds.
\n\"\"Chris, a seasoned ghostwriter for adults and a frequent co-author for middle grade (writing Middle School<\/em> series books with James Patterson, the Survivor<\/em> series with Jeff Probst, and the YA novel M or F?<\/em> with Lisa Papademetriou). was celebrating his debut solo YA novel, a terrific Sliding Doors<\/em>-esque split-possibility scenario where a teen who knocks himself out huffing a Whip-It in the alley behind work faces the consequences of his actions.
\n\"\"Liza,\u00a0the picture book illustrator for Kim Norman’s popular series, Ten on the Sled<\/em>, If It’s Snowy and You Know It, Clap Your Paws<\/em>, and She’ll Be Coming Up the Mountain<\/em>, as well as her own adorable\u00a0Emerson Barks<\/em> and innumerable educational titles, was celebrating her sly, warm-hearted new book about a little kitten who\u00a0pesters for a thrilling, danger-filled adventure story only to\u00a0find he doesn’t want quite as much “scary” as he thought.
\nThe studio was filled to the rafters with Liza and Chris’s friends, family, and colleagues, all delighted to be there despite the 90+-degree day. Sure, Liza’s tiger kitten cupcakes threatened to melt, and there was a drooping-licorice-whiskers incident, but partygoers dove into them with gusto.\"\"
\nChris\u00a0had ordered shortbread cookies with\u00a0his book jacket\u00a0in icing, which were similarly devoured, and a friend of his made paper flowers out of copies of the cover and popped them in a whipped-cream-canister vase. So clever!!\"\"
\nThe signing lines were long and happy,
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\nand I was a happy bookseller.
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\nThe whole event was a delight \u2014 so many people showed up to share their love\u00a0for Chris and Liza and their work. Those two authors had done enormous amounts of planning to create a beautiful evening, and the art studio venue\u2014which holds classes for pre-K through adults and has a delicious cafe, all in a busy part of town with few community spaces\u2014is the perfect example of how to create meaningful gathering places in unexpected areas.
\nThe next day, I was expecting to sell books for an out-of-town author at another fantastic offsite venue, the Clemmons Family Farm<\/a>. The Clemmons family have been in Vermont for generations. They were one of the first African-American families to settle in the area, and their legacy of achievement and generosity is legendary. Jack and Lydia Clemmons, now 96, were a young doctor and nurse who decided to move here in the early ’60s, despite incredulity and concern from family and friends, and create a small farm in addition to pursuing their medical work.
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Jack and Lydia Clemmons (with thanks to their website for the photo).<\/p><\/div>
\nWhat they’ve built is tremendous, and their six buildings have become an African American Heritage and Multicultural Center that hosts many events every year. This year’s theme is To Sing of Common Things: Making A Way Out of No Way<\/em>, and the event itself was a testament to the theme.
\nThe visiting author they’d invited, Shomari Wills\u00a0(Black Fortunes:The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Survived Slavery and Became Millionaires<\/em>)\u00a0had to cancel at the last minute, and it wasn’t until I’d already unloaded many boxes of books that I discovered he wouldn’t be there. The Saturday event would still be happening, but the Sunday event was called off altogether.
\nThis was a hitch, to be sure, and I marveled at the grace with which Lydia Clemmons (the daughter of 96-year-old Lydia) was handling the shift in plans.
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\nLydia had just learned the news the day before, and her quick thinking brought in a power-hitter of a substitute guest: the award-winning poet Major Jackson. Major was traveling in another part of the state, but immediately said yes to Lydia’s request.
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Major Jackson, reading from The Best American Poetry 2019.<\/p><\/div>
\nHe joined the event’s moderator, Wanda Heading-Grant, a University of Vermont professor and award-winning Diversity and Inclusion leader.
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Wanda Heading-Grant, UVM professor and guest speaker.<\/p><\/div>
\nWanda had also been thrown a curveball with the change of speakers; suddenly,\u00a0most of the questions she had prepared for the author had to be thrown out, and a new conversation created. She handled it like the pro that she is; sitting in the audience, you would never know this wasn’t the originally scheduled event.
\nLydia started off the event by introducing her parents to the audience. Jack and Lydia Sr. were seated front and center, facing the crowd, in a plush love seat throne of honor. On either side were\u00a0the visiting speakers. Lydia welcomed everyone, gave a little intro about the Clemmons Family Farm’s cultural programs for the year, and explained the slight change of plans.
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\nWhat followed was so special and wonderful that I was filled with gratitude. What could have been simply a disaster, from an event standpoint,\u00a0had become a most beautiful community blessing.
\nMajor Jackson spoke a bit about African American success in this country, and the way in which\u00a0Americans\u00a0tend to define success, which\u00a0is often at odds with other kinds of success. He spoke beautifully about valuing our elders, about the importance of young people finding mentors to help them navigate the difficult waters of growing up and surviving, especially as Black Americans in this nation. He read pieces (not his own)\u00a0from the upcoming Scribner collection that he guest edited, The Best American Poetry 2019,\u00a0<\/em>and talked about how national themes of concern presented themselves \u2014directly or obliquely\u2014again and again in the thousands of poetry submissions he pored over to create the collection, from the #MeToo movement to Black Lives Matter to pay equity to isolation and connection.
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\nWanda Heading-Grant asked fabulous questions connecting Major’s readings to the theme of the Clemmons Family Farm’s discussion series,\u00a0To Sing of Common Things: Making A Way Out of No Way<\/em>, which led to Major talking about how each generation of Black Americans had a particular challenge to face, and again how the younger people can draw on their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences in order to help them “make a way out of no way” themselves.
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\nThe main presentation was followed by one of the best Q&A discussions I’ve heard in a long time \u2014 thoughtful questions and replies that were both moving and inspiring. Afterward, Lydia Clemmons invited everyone into the room where they were serving fresh fruit, samosas, and ginger juice, and where my book table was set up. The conversation was lively and fun, and the room a refreshingly cool\u00a0counterpoint to the sweltering heat outside. It was a happy party.
\nDespite the fact that everyone wanted Major Jackson’s books (the two he read from are forthcoming this fall, and we hadn’t had time to bring in multiple copies of his others), we still sold nine copies of Black Fortunes\u00a0<\/em>(a great read and an important slice of history), which I count as a\u00a0notable success given the unexpected circumstances.
\nAs I packed up the boxes and headed out, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that the event had turned out exactly as it did. While I would have loved to hear Mr. Wills talk about the incredible entrepreneurs and business people in Black Fortunes<\/em>, I\u00a0can’t imagine a conversation more moving or inspiring than the afternoon we enjoyed.
\nBoth of the events that weekend created and celebrated community in the most fantastic ways\u2014just two of the ways books bring people together, again and again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How any kind of event, even the unexpected, creates community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}