Post-Frankfurt Return to Earth: Carmen Boullosa in Frankfurt This Week
COPIES OF TEXAS HAVE LANDED!!
If you are a subscriber or have preordered a copy of TEXAS: THE GREAT THEFT, your copy is in the mail (and if you live in Dallas, you should receive no later than Tuesday the 20th). The bookstores where Carmen is reading in the next week will all have copies onsale by the end of this week (that is: Brazos Bookstore in Houston; The Twig Book Shop in San Antonio; and McNally Jackson in NYC; and they’re already onsale at The Wild Detectives and will be available at the Texas Book Festival in Austin all weekend).
Reminder, Carmen will be reading in Dallas TWICE this week, once Tuesday night at the Mexican Consulate in honor of the Mexico Institute’s 31st annual Day of the Spanish Language Celebration, and on Wednesday night at the Wild Detectives at 7pm.
And don’t forget to catch Carmen across Texas all week!
Tue. Oct. 21 – Consulate General of Mexico – Dallas, TX – 6:30pm
Wed. Oct. 22 – The Wild Detectives – Dallas, TX – 7pm
Thu. Oct. 23 – The Twig Book Shop – San Antonio, TX – 7pm
Fri. Oct. 24 – Brazos Bookstore – Houston, TX – 7pm
Sat. Oct. 25 – Texas Book Festival – Austin, TX – 4:15pm
In fun Dallas news, just after receiving the cartons of books Friday morning, I delivered books to Joel Garza’s Senior AP Lit class at Greenhill School, who will be reading the book the next two weeks, and who will be receiving a visit from Carmen herself Tuesday morning to discuss the themes of the book:
On the note of books, effective November 1, Deep Vellum will be distributed to the publishing trade by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. This means stores can order Carmen Boullosa’s TEXAS: THE GREAT THEFT to receive copies ahead of its December publication date (the warehouse will receive its copies mid-week this week).
Readers, you may ask what this note about distribution means for you. The answer, in short, is that being distributed by Consortium means not only are our books available to a wider bookstore & retail audience (from Amazon & B&N to your favorite local indie), but we also share distribution with some of our favorite independent publishers, like Akashic Books, Open Letter Books, Coffee House Press, And Other Stories, New Vessel Press, & more. Consortium is an independent distributor for independent publishers based in Minneapolis (dear, beloved, uber-literary Minneapolis, home to so many good publishers and readers). We are in good company, and this distribution arrangement means that YOU can get your hands on the best books easier than ever before. Indie style. Literary style.
We’ve had some pretty amazing press news as of late too!!
Thank you to my friends at Brazos Bookstore for writing a very nice profile of Deep Vellum in the leadup to our first event together, Carmen Boullosa’s reading at their store next Friday, October 24. And plus, this profile has one of the best titles I’ve yet heard,”The Depths of Deep Vellum.” Here’s a snippet:
Now, Deep Vellum is on the verge of releasing its first title, TEXAS: THE GREAT THEFT. It’s the most recent work from Carmen Boullosa, an author that Robert Bolaño once called “Mexico’s greatest woman writer.” Unsurprisingly, Post and Open Letter played an integral part in bring this book to Evans’ attention. They passed on the title, but they made sure that Evans knew about it, thinking it would be a perfect fit for Deep Vellum. They were right. It’s a more than fitting first title for a small press in the Lone Star State.
Over the weekend, the Dallas Morning News, our daily newspaper, ran Mercedes Olivera‘s profile of Deep Vellum with a short interview with Carmen talking about TEXAS and her upcoming readings in town. You can click the picture below to access the article online as well:
In Frankfurt news, this was my third time attending the Frankfurt Book Fair, and by far the most rewarding fair I’ve had yet. One of the highlights of the Fair consisted of making my first in-person offer for two books by a remarkable author I’ll tell you about once the deal terms are finalized (another unbelievably great author expanding the global vision of our editorial mission, and yet another example of one of the world’s greatest authors who will appear in English translation for the first time through Deep Vellum). Other highlights of the Far included spending a great deal of time with Eduardo Rabasa of Sexto Piso, one of my favorite Mexican indie publishers (along with Almadia and Ediciones Era), and the ladies from the Pontas Agency, who had a breakthrough hit at the Fair with huge international sales for Milena Busquets’s THIS TOO SHALL PASS, and from whom I’ve bought Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s TRAM 83 and Leila S. Chudori’s HOMECOMING. Another highlight was meeting the legendary agent Andrew Wylie for the first time at the Suhrkamp party, and then meeting renowned author and editor at Italy’s Adelphi publishing house, Roberto Calasso, the same night as well. A wonderful experience, as always. Attending the Frankfurt Book Fair provides me the inspiration and energy to last me through the year, inspiring me to dream big, to publish the best authors possible, and to build a committed readership of literary works. I love going to Frankfurt! Plus now I have an insane amount of reading and prep work to do to get ready to publish the books I heard about at this fair (and the books I’ve heard about in fairs past that are now making more and more sense for my list…).
Will Evans & Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer in the legendary anarchist bar WW Dranklokaal in Leiden, Netherlands
Plus, this year’s Frankfurt trip was twice as nice since I got to see not only one of my translators (Roland Glasser, who lives in London & who’ll be translating TRAM 83), but I got to see two Deep Vellum authors as well. I flew in to Holland the weekend before the book fair and got to meet with Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, who lives in Genoa, Italy but who just so happened to be in Holland the weekend before Frankfurt, so we met up in Leiden at the only bar that still allows you to smoke indoors in Leiden (or perhaps all of Holland, the Dranklokaal WW, a bar that Peter of De Arbeiderspers, Ilja’s Dutch publisher, and I commiserated about meeting Ilja inside, coming out reeking of smoke, and which also happens to be just around the corner from Ilja’s Dutch flat).
I was also thrilled that my dear friend Mikhail Shishkin was attending the book fair to meet with his German publishers (DVA) and to read at the fair itself. For the second time in my three years of going to Frankfurt, I met up with Shishkin at his dinner with his German publishers (and thanks be to their entire team for letting me join them, and for cultivating Shishkin’s oeuvre so well over the years, and for sharing such an awesome author with us!).
Look forward to seeing you all at Carmen’s readings across Texas this week, please don’t forget to preorder or subscribe, orders are shipping now as they come in. And copies of TEXAS will be in stores across the world December 2, just in time for your holiday wishlists!!
Mikhail Shishkin & Will Evans in Frankfurt, Germany