The September 19—20 Southeastern Booksellers Association meeting and trade show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., got off to a bang with Thursday's Rep Appreciation and Book Awards, held at Mitchell Kaplan's elegant Books & Books in nearby Coral Gables. Winners of the awards, sponsored by Baker & Taylor, were Rick Bragg's Ava's Man (Knopf) for best nonfiction; Doug Marlette's The Bridge (HarperCollins) for best fiction; and J.J. Reneaux's How Animals Saved the People (HarperCollins) for children's book of the year. Each winner received a $500 check. University of Georgia professor Max Reinhart accepted his late wife's award and said the money would be donated to the National Storytelling Network's J.J. Reneaux Young Artists Fund. Attendees took home posters featuring a cartoon drawn for the occasion by Marlette, a Pulitzer Prize—winning political cartoonist. (According to SEBA executive director Wanda Jewell, 288 awards ballots were received from SEBA's 301 member stores , an enviably high rate of participation.)

For a while, it appeared the show might not go on: the initial set-up, in the Fort Lauderdale-Broward County Convention Center failed a fire inspection and the exhibit had to be relocated to another part of the cavernous hall. Still, Friday's panels, workshops, near-capacity breakfast and luncheon, poolside cocktail party featuring Hill Street's Music Makers and "Late Night with Marlo Thomas" (The Right Words at the Right Time, Pocket Books) all went off without problems.

In fact, the panels and workshops PW sampled were notable for their good attendance and provocative discussions. Among the tidbits: at the "Writers of the Civil War" panel, Mort Kuntsler, author of Gods and Generals: The Paintings of Mort Kuntsler (Greenwich Workshop), predicted that there will be an explosive rise in Civil War books published next year, spurred by the 140th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg as well as the film version of Jeff Shaara's Gods and Generals (Ballantine).

At a panel on reading groups, "The main point we wanted to make is that reading groups are out there, and it is a bookseller's job to make their stores the place to go for group information and purchases," said moderator Russell Perreault, Vintage v-p and publicity director. "As Robert Segedy [of McIntyre's, Pittsboro, N.C.] said, that's one thing smaller stores can do better than anyone else."

At the graphic novels panel, moderator Michael Murphy, a CDS Books v-p, called graphic novels a "format" instead of a genre, and noted that the format is both "explosive" and the book industry's "fastest-growing segment." The panel sparked brisk traffic at the exhibits of CDS, Crossgen Comics, Diamond Book Distributors and Koen, which will soon offer an expanded catalogue of graphic novels called Koen Comics.

All panels, events and many exhibits were taped for later Webcasting to members through sebaweb.org's innovative "virtual SEBA."

Accustomed to a 1,500—2,000 total turnout, some exhibitors were disappointed with attendance of "more than" 1,200. "We're seeing a lot of Florida booksellers, but not the number from elsewhere we're used to at SEBA," said Carolyn Sakowski, president of John F. Blair, Publishers in Winston-Salem, N.C. More philosophically, University Press of Kentucky sales manager Wyn Morris reasoned, "The benefits of one-on-one interaction with the folks who buy and sell our books far outweigh meager on-site ordering." Several exhibitors told PW they were happy to see so many first-timers, who represented a quarter of the bookseller attendance, a SEBA record.

One of the 35 authors enlivening Saturday evening's Moveable Feast, Tayari Jones found it the "perfect opportunity" to talk with booksellers about her first novel, Leaving Atlanta (Warner), which is based on the 1979—80 Atlanta child murders. "It was like having dinner with friends," she told PW. "The feast is billed as an opportunity for authors to get to know booksellers, and that is exactly what happened."

Pat Conroy summed it up: "SEBA, it means homeland to me."