Despite the challenges of navigating the 73-story Detroit Marriott Hotel at the Renaissance Center, a circular skyscraper surrounded by office towers that could have been designed by M.C. Escher, this year’s Heartland Fall Forum, held October 18–20, was a resounding success, and was this year’s largest regional gathering. The conference drew 566 attendees total, including 285 booksellers from across the Midwest and Great Lakes region to network with each other, meet authors, and check out 80 vendor displays representing hundreds of publishers and rep groups, including some first-time Canadian publisher attendees, drawn by Detroit’s proximity to the border.
MIBA executive director Carrie Obry ascribed Heartland’s spike in attendance to a perfect storm: “Booksellers enjoyed the chance to visit a fascinating Midwest city they may not otherwise get to, people feel like the pandemic is behind us, and BookExpo is long gone,” she said. “Plus, bookstore openings are continually on the rise. Just speaking for MIBA, our membership is up 27%.”
As for GLIBA, its membership has doubled in the past five years, from 130 stores in 2018 to 261 in 2023. “All these new stores are excited to meet each other and experience Heartland,” GLIBA executive director Larry Law said.
Author Isaac Fitzgerald, who emceed the Heartland Booksellers Awards gala for the fourth year, set the tone for the event—and perhaps for the entire conference—by calling the hundreds of booksellers packed in a hotel ballroom “champions,” and congratulating them for “making it through another year of fighting so tirelessly for the written word.”
“So many people help make a book happen, but it is you, the independent bookseller, who guides those books to the readers who need them most,” he said, despite “book bans; the site that shall not be named; algorithms—which can never replace you, no matter how hard they try; rising rents; supply chain issues—and that one customer who forgets the title, but they know ‘the cover is blue—no, green! It came out at some point in the last hundred years.’ ”
Urging booksellers not to lose sight that there is “the joy, the knowledge, the community, the service” in bookselling, Fitzgerald described their work as “a calling” and thanked them for “keeping the faith.”
Five Heartland Booksellers Awards were given out by Fitzgerald, including two awards for children’s books. Krystal Marquis won the MG/YA book award for The Davenports (Dial), and Jacqueline Woodson won the picture book award for The World Belonged to Us (Penguin/Paulsen Books), illustrated by Leo Espinosa. While Marquis was on hand to accept her award, Woodson accepted hers via video, explaining that she was on tour for Remember Us, an October release for middle grade readers, and unable to stop in Detroit.
“If I wasn’t on tour, I’d be there, celebrating you, and celebrating you celebrating me, celebrating The World Belonged to Us,” she said, thanking booksellers on behalf of all writers. “You have put books into people’s hands,” she said, “you have come to us, and told us how much our work has meant to the people in your community. You have worked inside your communities to keep words and books and reading alive and I appreciate you.” After reading her “favorite” page in The World Belonged to Us, Woodson concluded, “Heartland, I so appreciate you.”
Voices of the Heartland
After the book awards segment of the program, Alyson Jones Turner, the co-owner of Detroit’s Source Booksellers, introduced her mother and business partner, Janet Webster Jones, this year’s Voice of the Heartland recipient. Jones, who previously worked as a speech therapist for the Detroit Public Schools system, has been a bookseller for almost 35 years, launching her career in 1989 with pop-ups at church bazaars, fairs, and other community events, before moving into a stand-alone bricks-and-mortar store in 2013.
Citing her background as a speech therapist, Jones noted that the Heartland region encompasses 13 states, “representing one third of the 50 states of the United States of America. Our voices spread across a lot of territory. Our voices have a lot to do and many ways to do it.” She urged her fellow booksellers “to keep books available to all who seek knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.” Doing so, she said, “is our collective voice and our sacred mission as booksellers.” Concluding her remarks, Jones urged the audience to “join together to create literary citizens.”
The next day focused on education, and the panel session on book banning was especially popular, drawing at least 100 booksellers. During this session, the three bookseller panelists urged their professional colleagues to stock, display prominently, and handsell controversial books. Noting that “the books that are being banned are not the most radical books,” Jonathan Pope of Prologue Bookshop in Columbus, Ohio, said that the challenges by right-wing extremists focus on books that contain “even the most minute mention of something that might make someone uncomfortable,” although many of these books are “phenomenal” works by BIPOC authors. “Allow the space for these books,” he said. “If you don’t have them on your shelves nobody’s going to buy them, nobody’s going to read them.”
Grace Hagen from Novel Neighbor in St. Louis, Mo., added that “it’s harmful not to have these books on the shelves.” Citing the controversy regarding diverse books and book fairs that Scholastic is embroiled in and—after Heartland—ended up issuing an apology for having implemented, Hagen urged the audience to discuss with publishers the authors and books that are promoted to schools and libraries.
Ashley Valentine of Rooted MKE, a Milwaukee children’s bookstore/literary center, suggested that booksellers proactively recommend books to local educators. “This is something we have the power of doing every day,” she said. Audience member and MIBA board president Kristen Sandstrom, manager of Apostle Islands Booksellers in Bayfield, Wis., added that booksellers should offer student discounts along with teacher discounts and also invite educators to take students on field trips to local bookstores.
Big Books of the Show
While Erik Larson’s latest release, The Demon of Unrest (Crown, Apr. 2024), an account of the outbreak of the Civil War, was the big adult book at Heartland due to his compelling presentation, Salt the Water (Dutton, Oct.), [Candice Iloh’s YA novel-in-verse was the biggest book of the show on the children’s end. Iloh, a National Book Award finalist in 2021 for their debut YA novel, Every Body Looking was, along with Larson, one of four author keynote breakfast speakers on Friday. Iloh impressed and moved booksellers with their frank and honest account of how they pushed past depression and the despair of publishers rejecting other writing to draft Salt the Water. “I began writing the novel the summer before last,” they said, “although I was losing my faith in the author life.”
Sandstrom from Apostle Islands Booksellers called Salt the Water “one of the braver books I’ve read in a while. When the rest of the world keeps telling you what you ‘should’ do, it’s that much harder to follow your heart. But that is exactly what Cerulean Gene does.”
Sarah Brown, manager of Zenith Bookstore in Duluth, Minn., said that she was “blown away” by Iloh’s presentation. “They are truly writing without the ‘adult gaze,’ ” she said, “and I cannot wait to read this urgent and powerful book.” Brown also praised Ted Kooser: More Than a Local Wonder (University of Nebraska Press, Nov.), Carla Ketner’s children’s biography of the former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner. “We have sold Kooser’s children’s book, Marshmallow Clouds (Candlewick), which he co-authored with local poet Connie Wanek,” Brown said. “I am hoping this biography will give our young customers more insight into his life and work.”
Sarah Hollenbeck said that her two favorite discoveries at Heartland were Salt the Water and MABUHAY! (Graphix, Oct.), a graphic novel by Zachary Sterling. “I loved both of them,” she said.
As for Abel Velasquez, the marketing and events manager at Watermark Books in Wichita, Kans., his favorite book of the show was Alebrijes by Donna Barba Higuera (Levine Querido, Oct.). Velasquez explained that this apocalyptic novel for upper middle graders “creates a very fascinating world influenced by Mexican folklore that will introduce young readers to unique creatures that they may not have been exposed to previously. With the story being a bit darker, it will be very interesting to see how young readers will react to it. Maybe it will pique their interest in reading more similar stories.”
Pamela Klinger-Horn, an events coordinator affiliated with Valley Booksellers in Stillwater, Minn., was in the mood for something lighter than Iloh or Higuera’s intense reads. She praised Forsynthia: Rise of the Cupcakes by Rachel DiNunzio (Paw Prints, Jan. 2024), explaining that she was “enamored of this darling graphic novel from the moment I saw the funny little dragon characters and the cupcake storyline. Children love humorous books that keep them engaged. This one includes STEAM education, lots of family love, girl, empowerment, and, of course, cupcakes—what’s not to love?”
Veteran bookseller Dave Richardson, the principal of 451 Bookstore, a mobile bookstore in Cincinnati, Ohio, that he launched three years ago, has his eye on books that were released into the marketplace earlier this year. Richardson has high hopes for Erin Bow’s Simon Sort of Says (Hyperion) and Gary B. Schmidt’s Labors of Hercules (Clarion)—both of which he considers to be serious contenders for next year’s Newbery Medal.
“Hercules is so superbly written—the language and the structure of the story are just so engaging. Simon is hilarious, even though it deals with a very serious topic: school shootings. But humor runs all through it. I really love those two books.”
