I’m becoming a regular at MediaBistro Book Club. It’s one of my favorite reading series, essentially because it’s targeted toward people specifically in book publishing, so I get an opportunity to hear some great literature and chat with fellow book publishing professionals.
Usually when I attend publishing networking events it’s just other editors there, and when I attend readings it’s just bibliophiles and aspiring writers there. MediaBistro Book Club is one of the rare readings that’s actually geared towards those who work in the publishing industry.
This time around the MediaBistro Book Club was held at the Union Square Lounge, which provided an intimate set-up and good drink specials. I attended with one of my co-leaders from the Redeemer Writers Group and Burnside Writers Collective’s new fiction editor Mihaela Georgescu, and met some other creative writers, editors, designers, and production editors while mingling. Here’s a photo of me at the event.
Everyone always talks about how small the industry is, and the more I attend readings and connect with people through social media the more I see this to be the case. I spied David Goodwillie, whom I heard read at the reading The Shrinks Are Away, chatting it up with MediaBistro Book Club reader Andrew Foster Altschul. It wouldn’t surprise me at all that they’re friends, given their cultural critiques.
Altschul’s Deus Ex Machina is a scathing look at reality tv. He’s also the author of Lady Lazarus.
Nelson Aspen is the Ryan Seacrest of Down Under. He dished on being an exercise trainer to Princess Diana and meeting the official voice of Fred Flinstone (he even sang the Flinstones theme song!), as he told us about his celebrity cookbook Dinner at Nelson’s.
Margaret Floyd took the food talk in a more nutritional direction when she talked about her discovery of just how much food influences health and well-being. She tells all in Eat Naked Now.
Ben H. Winters claims he never had bedbugs even though he says 1 out of 3 New Yorkers have had them—even though no one will admit to it. He wrote a whole fright-fest called Bedbugs.
After the readings there was a spirited Q&A, where Aspen said he believes self-publishing is the way to go and Winters said he hatched Bedbugs with his publisher, one of my favorite book publishers Quirk Books, and therefore never even had to submit a book proposal. Interestingly, the fiction writers, Altschul and Winters, knew they wanted to be writers (instead of lawyers, which their parents’ wanted them to be), while the nonfiction writers, Aspen and Floyd, said that getting published was something that happened organically because of their other passions. I think the lesson for nonfiction writers is that in addition to a desire to write you should have a passion for another subject.
See you at the next reading on November 17?
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 
Again so many good books I must get time to read. May start Eat Naked first and perhaps I will look as good as Margaret.