Chapter Festivities in Brooklyn

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Last Sunday’s Brooklyn Book Festival was a great opportunity for us to get together with other chapter members and enthusiastic lovers of the written word.  The weather finally cooperated and cleared, and I’m sure the previous few days of rainy cabin fever helped the terrific turnout.  There was a huge number of readings and literary discussions going on simultaneously, all free to the public.  Individual venues were scattered outside Brooklyn Borough Hall and within the surrounding public buildings, and the public promenades of Columbus park were lined with exhibitor tables under blue canopies.

As first-timers, we christened the brand new banner you’ll see, and discovered that enough people hadn’t encountered us before that the name alone in huge letters made them curious.  During two-hour slots, SinC chapter authors took turns signing and selling, giving away publisher copies and special freebies.  Over the course of the day, we also sold 25+ copies of last year’s anthology, Murder New York Style, to readers who were excited to support local authors writing about their neighborhoods.  It was a friendly, unabashedly book-loving crowd, and several other local authors and downright luminaries stopped by to visit.

Hopefully the gallery of pictures below gives some sense of the event (click any to enlarge), but if you notice empty sidewalk, that was definitely taken early in the day.  Where there’s 1 Sister behind the table, it’s Robin Hathaway.  The 2 Sisters are (l to r) Lina Zeldovich and Peggy Ehrhart.  The 3 Sisters are K.J.A. (Ken) Wishnia, Cynthia Baxter, and Jill Brock.  Sadly, the Sisters I missed memorializing were Sue Yellin, who volunteers with the Brooklyn Borough offices and who became our indispensable liaison, and also our new(ish) chapter member transplanted from New Orleans, Laura John Rowland.  If we decide to do it again next year, and I certainly hope we will, I promise no one will escape the shutterbugging!