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Join us for our annual GLIBA Spring Forum! Spring Forum is an annual event to connect with booksellers, authors and publishers to promote new and upcoming book releases. Every year we look forward to bringing, authors, education and bookselling camaraderie to a different city in the Great Lakes Region. Due to the ongoing pandemic we are opting for virtual show again this year. We have expanded the scope of GLIBA's Spring Forum to better facilitate the needs of our region and offer some very special author events. Spring Forum will take place Tuesday, April 13 - Thursday, April 15 culminating in a very special event with Jonathan Franzen in conversation with Exile in Bookville's Javier Ramirez! Please check out the full event schedule below.
Full Event Schedule
Tuesday, April 13 Education
Education: Free Tools & Resources for Digital Marketing
11:00AM CDT - 12:00PM CDT / 12:00PM EDT - 1:00PM EDT We continue to adapt our businesses to the ongoing pandemic and look forward to maintaining a strong online presence post-pandemic. We will highlight several tools and resources that help shape our online identity, market our stores and better sell books. Co-owner of BookBug and this is a bookstore in Kalamazoo, MI, Joanna Parzakonis, will lead this workshop focused on free tools and resources that will help digitally market your business. |
Check Out The Full Session Recording
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Education: From Re-Opening, Staying Closed to any Transition of your Business; How to Create Language Around Transition and De-Escalation in Your Bookstore
12:30PM CDT - 11:30PM CDT / 1:30PM EDT - 2:30PM EDT Over the past year bookstores have transitioned to shipping centers, shortened hours, curbside, home delivery, remaining closed, re-opening, minimal staff, customer limitations and numerous other adaptations and re-adaptations from how business was previously run. Join Jenny Clines of Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago as she helps you create the language and environment in your bookstore to ensure your message is understood by your customers. As well as, practices in de-escalation while still figuring it all out. |
Check Out The Full Session Recording
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Wednesday, April 14 Rep PicksRep Picks Session 01 Live
11:00AM CDT - 12:00PM CDT / 12:00PM EDT - 1:00PM EDT 6 Reps 8 minutes each Hear from your regional reps about the titles they are most excited for this season.
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COMPANY |
REP NAME |
TITLE COLLECTION |
Abraham Associates |
John Mesjak & Sandra Law |
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HarperCollins |
Jenny Sheridan & Robin Smith |
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Chronicle Books |
John Mesjak & Sandra Law |
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Penguin Random House |
Bridget Piekarz, Laura Baratto & Brian Wilson |
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Consortium Book Sales & Distribution |
Ruth Berger |
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Workman Publishing |
Liz Hunter |
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Rep Picks Session 02 Live
12:30PM CDT - 1:30PM CDT / 1:30PM EDT - 2:30PM EDT 6 Reps 8 minutes each Hear from your regional reps about the titles they are most excited for this season.
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COMPANY |
REP NAME |
TITLE COLLECTION |
Ingram / PGW Two Rivers |
Johanna Hynes |
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Macmillan |
Anne Hellman |
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And Other Stories |
Tom Flynn |
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Simon & Schuster |
Leah Hays & Cara Nesi |
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Independent Publishers Group |
Chris Conti |
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Hachette Book Group |
Danielle Zielinski |
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Penguin Random House |
Tim Mooney & John Dennany |
Thursday, April 15 AuthorsMeet the Authors
11:00AM CDT - 12:00PM CDT / 12:00PM EDT - 1:00PM EDT 6 Authors 8 minutes each Join us for this special event with some of this seasons most anticipated authors. |
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JAYNE ALLEN
Jayne Allen is the pen name of Jaunique Sealey, a graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law School. An avid traveler, she speaks three languages and has visited five continents. Drawing from her unique experiences as an attorney and entrepreneur, she crafts transcultural stories that touch upon contemporary women’s issues such as workplace and career dynamics, race, fertility, modern relationships and mental health awareness. Her writing echoes her desire to bring both multiculturalism and multidimensionality to a rich and colorful cast of characters inspired by the magic uncovered in everyday life. Black Girls Must Die Exhausted is her first novel which she calls “the epitaph of my 30s.” A proud native of Detroit, she currently lives in Los Angeles. BLACK GIRLS MUST DIE EXHAUSTED
Galley Request An extraordinary new novel from the Newbery Honor–winning author of Other Words for Home about grief, loss—and how friendship can be magical. Cora hasn’t spoken to her best friend, Quinn, in a year. Despite living next door to each other, they exist in separate worlds of grief. Cora is still grappling with the death of her beloved sister in a school shooting, and Quinn is carrying the guilt of what her brother did. On the day of Cora’s twelfth birthday, Quinn leaves a box on her doorstep with a note. She has decided that the only way to fix things is to go back in time to the moment before her brother changed all their lives forever—and stop him. In spite of herself, Cora wants to believe. And so the two former friends begin working together to open a wormhole in the fabric of the universe. But as they attempt to unravel the mysteries of time travel to save their siblings, they learn that the magic of their friendship may actually be the key to saving themselves. The Shape of Thunder is a deeply moving story, told with exceptional grace, about friendship and loss—and how believing in impossible things can help us heal. |
Qian Julie Wang
Beautiful Country Doubleday | 9/7/2021 9780385547215 Edelweiss Link Galley Request: Beautiful Country QUIAN JULIE WANG
Qian Julie Wang is a litigator and a graduate of Yale Law School and Swarthmore College. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two rescue dogs, Salty and Peppers. BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
An incandescent and heartrending memoir from an astonishing new talent, Beautiful Country puts readers in the shoes of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world. In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to "beautiful country." Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian's parents were professors; in America, her family is "illegal" and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. In Chinatown, Qian's parents work in sweatshops and sushi factories. Instead of laughing at her jokes or watching her sing and dance, they fight constantly. Qian goes to school hungry, where she teaches herself English through library books, her only source of comfort. At home, Qian's headstrong and resilient Ma Ma ignores her own pain until she's unable to stand, too afraid of the cost and attention a hospital visit might bring. And yet, young Qian, now acting as her mother's nurse, her family's translator, a student and a worker, cannot ask for help. The number-one rule in America still stands: To be noticed is to risk losing everything. Searing and unforgettable, Beautiful Country is an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light. |
Jasmine Warga
The Shape of Thunder HarperCollins | 5/11/2021 9780062956675 Edelweiss Link Galley Request: The Shape of Thunder JASMINE WARGA
Jasmine Warga is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Other Words for Home, a Newbery Honor Book and Walter Honor Book for Younger Readers. Her teen books, Here We Are Now and My Heart and Other Black Holes, have been translated into over twenty-five languages. She lives in the Chicago-area with her family. You can visit Jasmine online at www.jasminewarga.com. THE SHAPE OF THUNDER
Galley Request An extraordinary new novel from Jasmine Warga, Newbery Honor–winning author of Other Words for Home, about loss and healing—and how friendship can be magical. Cora hasn’t spoken to her best friend, Quinn, in a year. Despite living next door to each other, they exist in separate worlds of grief. Cora is still grappling with the death of her beloved sister in a school shooting, and Quinn is carrying the guilt of what her brother did. On the day of Cora’s twelfth birthday, Quinn leaves a box on her doorstep with a note. She has decided that the only way to fix things is to go back in time to the moment before her brother changed all their lives forever—and stop him. In spite of herself, Cora wants to believe. And so the two former friends begin working together to open a wormhole in the fabric of the universe. But as they attempt to unravel the mysteries of time travel to save their siblings, they learn that the magic of their friendship may actually be the key to saving themselves. The Shape of Thunder is a deeply moving story, told with exceptional grace, about friendship and loss—and how believing in impossible things can help us heal. |
COURTNEY COOK
Courtney Cook is a writer, illustrator, teacher, and lover of naps. Courtney received an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of California, Riverside. She grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, and now resides in Chicago with her cat, Bertie. THE WAY SHE FEELS
“Audaciously human and raw. The Way She Feels is a rainbow during the rain.” —Mara Altman A witty and one-of-a-kind debut graphic memoir detailing and drawing the life of a girl with borderline personality disorder finding her way—and herself—one day at a time. What does it feel like to fall in love too hard and too fast, to hate yourself in equal and opposite measure? To live in such fear of rejection that you drive friends and lovers away? Welcome to my world. I’m Courtney, and I have borderline personality disorder (BPD), along with over four million other people in the United States. Though I’ve shown every classic symptom of the disorder since childhood, I wasn’t properly diagnosed until nearly a decade later, because the prevailing theory is that most people simply “grow out of it.” Not me. In my illustrated memoir The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces, I share what it’s been like to live and love with this disorder. Not just the hospitalizations, treatments, and residential therapy, but the moments I found comfort in cereal, the color pink, or mini corn dogs; the days I couldn’t style my hair because I thought the blow-dryer was going to hurt me; the peace I found when someone I love held me. This is a book about vulnerability, honesty, acceptance, and how to speak openly—not only with doctors, co-patients, friends, family, or partners, but also with ourselves. |
ROBIN MCLEAN
Robin McLean worked as lawyer and then a potter for fifteen years in the woods of Alaska before receiving her MFA at UMass Amherst. Her story collection Reptile House won the 2013 BOA Editions Fiction Prize and was twice a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Story Prize. PITY THE BEAST
A mind-melting eco-feminist Western Following in the footsteps of such chroniclers of American absurdity as Cormac McCarthy, Joy Williams, and Charles Portis, Robin McLean’s Pity the Beast is a mind-melting feminist Western that pins a tale of sexual violence and vengeance to a canvas stretching back to prehistory, sideways into legend, and off into a lonesome future. Millennia ago, Ginny’s family farm was all grass and rock and wild horses. A thousand years hence, it’ll all be peacefully underwater. In the matter-of-fact here and now, though, it’s a hotbed of lust and resentment, and about to turn ugly, because Ginny’s just cheated on her husband Dan with the man who lives next door. Out on these prairies, word travels fast: everyone seems to know everyone’s business. They know what Ginny did, and they know Ginny isn’t sorry. She might not be proud of what she’s done, but she doesn’t regret it either. To be honest, she enjoyed the hell out of it, and as far as Ginny is concerned, that should be the end of the story. Problem is, no one else seems able to let it go. The community can’t bear to let a woman like Ginny off the hook. Not with an attitude like hers. With detours through time, space, and myth, not to mention into the minds of a pack of philosophical mules, Pity the Beast heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American letters. It is a novel that turns our assumptions about the West, masculinity, good and evil, and the very nature of storytelling onto their heads, with an eye to the cosmic as well as the comic. It urges us to write our stories anew—if we want to avoid becoming beasts ourselves. |
Kyle Scheele & illustrator Andy J. Pizza
A Pizza with Everything on It Chronicle Books | 4/27/2021 9781797202815 Edelweiss Link KYLE SCHEELE & ILLUSTRATOR ANDY J. PIZZA
Kyle Scheele is an artist, author, and professional speaker who travels across the country using storytelling to inspire and motivate people of all ages. He lives in Springfield, Missouri, with his family. Learn more at www.kylescheele.com. Andy J. Pizza is the acclaimed illustrator behind the popular podcast Creative Pep Talk, and the author-illustrator of many books for children and adults. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his family. Learn more at www.andyjpizza.com. A PIZZA WITH EVERYTHING ON IT
One father-son duo make a pizza so delicious, and so over-the-top with toppings, that it destroys the universe—and will surely melt readers' minds and hearts, like warm mozzarella. It's a tale as old as time: a kid wants to make a pizza with his dad, but not just any pizza . . . he wants a pizza with everything on it. That's right, everything. But as the toppings pile on, this father-son duo accidentally create a pizza so delicious, so extravagant, so over-the-top, that it destroys the universe—and the cosmos go as dark as burnt crust. Will anyone enjoy pizza ever again? At turns heartwarming, hilarious, and completely out of this world, Kyle Scheele and Andy J. Pizza deliver a riotous adventure that will melt readers minds and hearts and leave them calling for a second helping. |
Thursday, April 15 Jonathan Franzen in Conversation with Javier Ramirez
12:30PM CDT - 1:30PM CDT / 1:30PM EDT - 2:30PM EDT
Please join us for this exceptionally special event with author Jonathan Franzen. It would be safe to consider Jonathan the voice of a generation and we are beyond thrilled to have him as our featured event at this year's GLIBA Spring Forum.
Please join us for a presentation from Jonathan followed by a conversation with Javier Ramirez, co-owner of Exile in Bookville in Chicago, IL.
Please join us for a presentation from Jonathan followed by a conversation with Javier Ramirez, co-owner of Exile in Bookville in Chicago, IL.
Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels, including The Corrections, Freedom, and Purity, and five works of nonfiction, most recently Farther Away and The End of the End of the Earth, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Santa Cruz, California. Crossroads
Crossroads is the first novel in Jonathan Franzen's magnum opus, A Key to All Mythologies. The trilogy tells the story of a Midwestern family across three generations, mirroring the preoccupations and dilemmas of the United States from the Vietnam War to the 2020sJonathan Franzen has been universally recognized as the great novelist of his generation, a peer and inheritor of Steinbeck, Mailer, Updike, and Roth. Now in his sixties, he has been telling us the truth about the American family through novel after novel, from The Twenty-Seventh City to The Corrections to Freedom and beyond. In A Key to All Mythologies, he is writing the books of his career: a sweeping yet deeply intimate story that encompasses all the "mythologies"—the political, religious, intellectual, social, and emotional crosscurrents that have swept like wildfire across American life in the past decades. His subject this time is the Hildebrand family of New Prospect, Illinois, outside Chicago. The father, Russ, is the assistant pastor of the First Reformed Church and ex-director of Crossroads, its youth group. He and his wife, Marion, whose marriage has been slowly going stale, have four children. Clem has just left for college and is struggling with the moral dilemmas of the draft and his first sexual experience. Becky is the perfect apple of her father's eye and the most popular girl in school. And there are two younger boys: the scarily brilliant and erratic Perry, and Jay, the beloved baby of the family. All are at points of stress and crisis as Christmas 1971 approaches. Crossroads is the first volume in a trilogy inspired in part by Elena Ferrante's rich and reverberant Naples books. Not since The Corrections has an American novel given us the inside story of how we are living now with such intimacy, mordancy, and humor; and, as Franzen has said, his work finally always tends toward love and reconciliation. |
Javier ramirez
Hailing from Sacramento, California, Javier Ramirez has called Chicago home since 1995 and has been an indie bookseller for just as long. He’s been a judge for the Kirkus Nonfiction Prize in 2017, the National Book Award for Fiction in 2019 and read as a judge for Andrew Carnegie Medals in Fiction and Nonfiction for 2021. He currently serves on the Booksellers Advisory Council for the American Booksellers Association, has been on New City’s Annual Lit 50 list of Who Really Books in Chicago twice, and is the co-owner of Exile in Bookville in Chicago. Exile in bookville
Our brick & mortar space coming to Chicago in 2021. We may not have a physical space to shill books at, but with the help of the good folks at Bookshop we have set up a virtual space up for all of your book buying needs. We have curated lists, some of which will come from talented booksellers, authors, and other book and music folk. At Exile in Bookville (a nod to Liz Phair’s 1993 debut album Exile in Guyville) we believe that books and music are synonymous and want that to carry over into our virtual and physical space, where we will host book and music related events. —Javier Ramirez and Kristin Enola Gilbert |
Event Participation Includes
• Extensive Marketing via Email Blasts, Social Media, Website, GLIBA Private Discord Server,
• 1,592 Bookseller Email Contacts
• Expected Attendance 80+ booksellers
• All Sessions Recorded and Shared via Email, Social Media, YouTube
• Bookseller Participation Contact Information Shared with Participating Publishers
• ARC Galley Request Forms Shared via GLIBA
• Extensive Marketing via Email Blasts, Social Media, Website, GLIBA Private Discord Server,
• 1,592 Bookseller Email Contacts
• Expected Attendance 80+ booksellers
• All Sessions Recorded and Shared via Email, Social Media, YouTube
• Bookseller Participation Contact Information Shared with Participating Publishers
• ARC Galley Request Forms Shared via GLIBA