editor

This past weekend I attended the Festival of Books in Los Angeles. I have always had a soft spot for this festival as I first attended it as a high schooler desperate to be an author and then a school journalist aiming to be as objective and informative. This year, however, marks my first time attending as an editor and as someone who is more on the publishing side than the author side. 

That perspective marked a clear difference to me. This festival is a writer and author affair. Much like high school me, many people were there to attend author panels on storytelling to hone their craft or to get a unique insight on their favorite authors and their recent projects. Since my last LAT FOB visit in 2015, it has expanded even more with a YA stage, cooking demonstrations on the cooking stage, Latinidad stage, and an expanded poetry stage. 

I spent both days in attendance, attended one panel (California State of Mind: Publishing in the West) which considered questions on what makes California and particularly Los Angeles a unique place for publishing (stay tuned for an additional post about my personal thoughts on publishing in the west) and one cooking demonstration (Tiffani Theissen) on bagel french onion soup.

However, the highlights for me include talking to the publishers who attended and getting to know a little bit more about the people producing the books as products. I want to highlight everyone I managed to talk to for an actual conversation (in the order I remember talking to them, but otherwise no importance). 

• Expedition Press 
• Haymarket Books
• Heyday
• Patagonia Books
• T. Willingham Publishers
• Red Hen Press
• NASA
• Lazy Day Books (mobile bookseller)
• LA Review of Books
• California Native Plant Society
• Unnamed Press
• Penguin Young Readers
• Zibby Books
• Blackstone Publishing
• Los Angeles Times
• Great Oak Press

Thank you to everyone I talked to this weekend. I loved getting to know you better.