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Featuring best-selling author Hampton Sides in Conversation with Shirley Melis, NMBA Co-President, who is serving her second year in this role. She is the author of an award-winning memoir, Banged-Up Heart: Dancing with Love and Loss A native of Memphis, Hampton Sides is known for his gripping non-fiction adventure stories set in war or depicting epic expeditions of exploration. Breaking that mold was Hellhound On His Trail, an electrifying account of one of the largest manhunts in American history. His other best-selling narrative histories: Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, In the Kingdom of Ice, and On Desperate Ground. His latest work, The Wide Wide Sea, will be published this month (April) by Doubleday. In addition, we'll be announcing winners of the Southwest Book Design and Production Awards, an annual one-of-a-kind book competition. Stay tuned for more information about ticket prices, but mark your calendars now! What: 2024 NMBA Summer Gala When: Tuesday, August 27th, 5:30 - 8:30 p.m. Where: The Club at Las Campanas 132 Clubhouse Drive, Santa Fe 87506
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The New Mexico Writers annual dinner, where NMBA will have its display, brings established and aspiring writers together to celebrate and inspire each other and serves to celebrate each year’s NMW grant recipients. April 25th, 2024 5:00 p.m. - 10:30 p.m. La Fonda on the Plaza, 100 E San Francisco St., Santa Fe, NM, 87501 Our NMBA display at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, will be set up for the New Mexico Writers "catered" breakfast at the Convention Center on Saturday, May 18th and may remain for the duration of the Festival. Any NMBA author whose work is displayed may attend the breakfast by joining the NMW ($30/year). Display books will be donated to New Mexico libraries by NMW after the Festival. May 18th-May 19th, 2024 8:00 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W Marcy st., Santa Fe, NM 87501 The successful “Meet the Authors” collaboration between the New Mexico Book Association and Garcia Street Books has resumed for the 2024 season. On the first Saturday of the month, the bookstore sets up a table for up to 3 authors in the portal in front of the store. Authors bring their own books to the table; when a customer buys a book, Garcia Street Books rings up the sale. Authors get 60% of the cover price for each book sold, paid in cash after the event, and may consign a book to be displayed in the bookstore.
Our first table on March 2 featured authors Nancy de Young and Vijali Hamilton. The April 6 table will showcase authors Claude Phipps, Mike Kimmel, and collaborators Melanie Faithful and Sally Kruse. The bookstore plans to continue the tables through October, and we will soon look for participants for future dates. If you’re interested in being a part of “Meet the Authors,” watch for an email and respond promptly: Spaces are limited, and authors are usually chosen in the order that we receive their applications. Note: This event is for authors new to the store. Authors whose books are already on sale at Garcia Street Books are not eligible – including authors who appeared on a previous “Meet the Authors” table. All authors must be current members of NMBA to participate.
Early Sunday afternoon I left NMBA Booth #150, pulling a wagonload of books and display signs to the Indie Pavilion for Fiction and Nonfiction Authors. (Indie authors are those who have been published by a publisher who is not one of the Big Five: Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan.) Notified in December that my memoir, Banged-Up Heart, had been selected for the Pavilion, I arrived with books in hand and registered off-site on Friday, selecting my table in the Pavilion based only on the fact that the sun wouldn’t be in my eyes. Hours later, when I found the Indie Pavilion, I discovered two huge barrels of water adjacent to my table, anchoring the Pavilion tent. Thinking they might block me from the view of walkers passing by, I wished I’d selected another table. Fortunately, they weren’t a deterrent. Much to my surprise and delight, Ursula whom I’d met the day before while waiting in line to hear three authors discuss “The GOP’s Evolving Base,” brought a clutch of friends to meet me. Turned out it was her Tucson book club. When one of them asked if I would return to Tucson to discuss my book with them, I told her about the Sedona book club that had visited me in Santa Fe. “Let’s take a trip to Santa Fe to see Shirley and discuss her book,” she crowed. “That would be great!” I said. “You should feel good about being in the Indie Pavilion,” Hillary, the Indie honcho said when I introduced myself. “We had 220 submissions for 100 spots. And most of them were memoir and poetry. Of course, we couldn’t have just memoir and poetry because we wanted a diverse representation of Indie authors. So, we had to make tough decisions.” “I was surprised my book was selected because it’s seven years old,” I said. “There was a SNAFU on our part. Every submission was supposed to have been published in the last two years but that copy got inexplicably dropped. So, Shirley, you should feel really good.” I did, and I do. Being selected for the Indie Pavilion was an honor, not to mention an opportunity to sell a few books. I would encourage authors to keep an eye on the Tucson Festival of Books website and submit their books when submissions for 2025 open up. The NM Book Association recently participated in the Tucson Festival of Books, held on the University of Arizona campus on March 9-10, 2024. The festival is a major annual event in Tucson and draws over 100,000 attendees. This is our third year in a row of exhibiting at the festival. Our total sales this year were a little better than last year’s, but, as usual, they varied greatly, and many authors sold only one book or none at all. However, this isn’t conclusive: We handed out dozens of flyers with the QR Code and website address for our online catalog, as well as NMBA business cards and SWBDA contest brochures. Authors and publishers may hear from potential customers in the future, and NMBA may gain contest entries and new members. Some general observations: It’s impossible to predict which books will sell and which won’t. Last year we were asked for books in a couple of genres that we didn’t have. This year we had them, but they didn’t sell! Authors who volunteer at the show have an advantage because they can bring extra copies of their books to sell. Our best-selling authors were volunteers who sold out their original 5 copies, and a few more. But all our volunteers did their best to sell everyone’s books, not just their own. Participating in the Indie Author Pavilion is a good way to boost sales. This requires a separate application through the Festival website, and costs a small fee, but NMBA shared the information in advance of the deadline. In general, customers like to interact with authors who are enthusiastic about their books and willing to talk about them, so going to a show is always a good idea. Emails have gone out to everyone who participated. Authors who sold books at the show received a summary of their sales, and they can choose to be paid through PayPal or to receive a check in the mail. As for books that didn’t sell, we can store them for our next sales event, or, if notified in advance, we can bring them to our next in-person luncheon. Many thanks to the volunteers who worked at the show. A special shout-out to Roxanne Howe-Murphy and Jack Meyer, who helped to load into the booth on a rainy morning (luckily, we had beautiful weather for the rest of the weekend!), and to Jack, Shirley Melis, Jordan Jones, and Leslie Stalhut, who packed up the booth while the Booth Chair was stuck in a long line of cars trying to get in. And thanks again to Anna Sochocky for collecting books before the show, Jordan for designing the booth banner and tracking entries and payments (and just about everything else), and Frank Hirsch for moral support.
You are invited to enter the eleventh annual New Mexico Book Association (NMBA) Southwest Book Design and Production Awards (SWBDA)! SWBDA recognizes creativity and quality in book design and distinction in production. The awards are designed to showcase excellence in book design and publishing — and to help raise the standards of book design and production — throughout the Southwest. Books are judged on the principles and elements of design, including industry–accepted format, visual appeal, and consistency.
Eligibility: To be eligible, a title:
Additional information, detailed criteria, and both online and downloadable signup forms are available on the SWBDA information page at: https://www.nmbookassociation.org/swbda-2024.html N. Scott MomadayPulitzer Prize-winning author, poet and storyteller N. Scott Momaday (89) died in Santa Fe in January. After earning a BA degree in English at the University of New Mexico, Momaday won a poetry fellowship to the creative writing program at Stanford University, where he received a doctorate in English literature. His ground-breaking novel, House Made of Dawn, the story of a young Native man who returns to Jemez Pueblo to heal after serving in WWII and struggles to reconcile the man he has become with the man he was before leaving, is considered a masterpiece of Native American literature that has been credited with ushering in a period known as the Native American Renaissance. “He was the first,” said Institute of American Arts President Robert Martin. “He paved the way for all the Native writers of today. Before that there had been Native American writers and storytellers, but they had never been acknowledged for their importance or contributions until Scott Momaday came along.” Stanley Crawford Writer and farmer Stanley Crawford died in Dixon, New Mexico, in January at the age of 86. Educated at the University of Chicago and the Sorbonne, Crawford moved to Dixon in 1970, where he co-founded El Bosque, a garlic farm, with his wife RoseMary. For decades he sold produce at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market and served as the market’s president. Crawford published several novel and nonfiction books. Among the latter, A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm won the NMBA’s inaugural Richard Harris Award in 2013. “In order to become a bona fide New Mexican,” Crawford wrote in New Mexico Magazine in 2017, “it is best to submit to a number of initiation activities. A short list would include hunting for piñon nuts in scrubland hillside forests of the north in the fall, digging out an acequia in the spring, making adobe bricks in the summer, and building your own adobe house. Add: learning at least a few words of the unique norteño patois of northern New Mexico.” NMBA Treasurer Paula Lozar traveled to Dixon for Crawford’s garlic on more than one occasion.
Our thanks to the Board for organizing the event, to photographers Pat Galagan and Sally Thomson, to the staff of Las Campanas for their professional service, and to all our members for their support.
Garcia Street Books is excited to be celebrating the winners of this year’s prestigious Pasatiempo Writing Contest which has published outstanding literary works from a variety of genres. This year, there were categories in Fiction, Nonfiction/Essay/Memoir, and Poetry. New this year, the Pasatiempo team assembled a blue chip panel of judges to select top entries in each category, as well as a Grand Prize winner and a slate of Pasa Youth Writer Prize recipients. The contest was announced in November and winning entries were published in Pasatiempo on December 22. Come hear the Grand Prize winners and the youth categories winners read to your from their work! Sunday, January 28, 4pmRSVP is required, please click above.
For more information, call the store at (505) 986-0151 The New Mexico Library Association (NMLA) is holding its annual conference in Albuquerque on October 25-27, 2023, at the Marriott Pyramid North. NMBA will be displaying and selling our authors’ books in their exhibitor area.
This conference marks the 100th anniversary of NMLA, and is likely to be a well-attended event. Important: This opportunity is for NMBA members only. If you aren’t certain of your membership status, check the Member Directory at https://www.nmbookassociation.org/member-directory.html To participate, do the following:
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