The Mobile Book Cart arrived in the Grand Army branch of the Brooklyn Public Library on Saturday, August 20th, for the annual Small Press (SPF) celebration. Hundreds of book enthusiasts from all walks of life mix with regulars from the weekly farmers market that is held across the street throughout the day.
SPF made its debut nine years ago as a twelve-independent publishers’ partnership. Around 30 vendors have joined the event since then, including independent publishers, periodicals, and printers like One Story, n+1, and A Public Space. The event has grown rapidly since that time. Intellectuals from all over Brooklyn came to it. The SpeakEasy team frequently observed editors from Archipelago and Reckless Books passing by, which is not a coincidence.
SPF provides us with the option to sell rare books, in contrast to the majority of mobile book outreach activities where we donate brand-new books for free to communities in need. Some of the money raised will be used to support the Bookmobile and other outreach initiatives we run all year long. We’ve teamed up with Greenlight Books, which sells affordable books for nerds on a budget.
This year, our writers’ repertoires from their previous appearances on SpeakEasy’s serious entertainment night at Joe’s Pub in the East Village have been highlighted. Some of these are “Greenland” by David Santos Donaldson, “Smiles and Love Poems in Quarantine” by Sarah Ruhl, “Another Black Girl” by Zakia Delilah Harris, and other authors we’ve featured on stage and in classrooms, such as Mira Jacob’s Good Talk memoir at Joe’s in January 2020.
The visitors’ reaction to the numerous books on display left me feeling quite impressed. In terms of fiction, Olga Died Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez, which is about a 30-year-old wedding planner and her brother in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, was very well-liked. The memoir Please Miss: A Heartbreaking and Disturbing Work of Penis, written by Grace Lavery and published this year, made me happy to see Braiding Sweetgrass (by Robin Wall Kimmerer) on the truck rack (and a professor at my alma mater).