Book-buff
The kids are alright, and I will be too, once I recover.
I think we can all agree that Tucson, Arizona, brings to mind one image first and foremost, and that image is one of buff old women.
Where would we be without these ripped ladies of Tucson, Arizona? I’ll tell you: we would be still unloading boxes at the Tucson Festival of Books, and we would be doing so on principle at this point, because the festival was four weeks ago.
My little sister and I rolled into town with the tailpipe dragging on my soul. Also on my Kia Soul, because books are heavy and we brought a lot of ’em. But my soul-soul had the weight of earning back my vendor fee, and also of questioning every choice that led me to becoming—and remaining—a book publisher.
This is my day job, book publishing.
It is also, let’s be real, my night job. And my weekend job. I had the genius idea several years ago to jump into an industry widely perceived to be contracting if not outright decomposing, and to carve a niche as a New Mexican and Southwestern publisher. These regions are many things; among them is not “populous.” Not with people, in any case, and thus not with readers of books.
At least not readers with long remainders on their life expectancy. I hear a lot that kids don’t read anymore, as if it’s their fault and not an entire systemic problem.
So, to recap: I scraped into Tucson with a bunch of unsold books to set up at a vendor tent at the University of Arizona, where the students can’t read anyway, hoping to sell them all (the books, not the students) to my target demographic who tend to retire in Phoenix, not Tucson, but it doesn’t matter because in a decade my industry, my audience, and heck probably my planet will be dead anyway.
In this chipper state, tailpipe grinding, my sister and I drove to the U of A mall to load in. Not many people were around, just a couple security guards and someone directing traffic, which was only us at this early hour when the sky was light but the sun was not yet up. Every other book-slinger, by the look of it, had loaded in the day before.
We eased along the mall, the long grassy quad that wasn’t a mile but let’s say it was. Past tents, and tents, and more tents, labeled with the names of presses whose books I read, whose publishers I follow. And there, at the far end, there it was:
I’m man enough, and humanities major enough, to acknowledge that I cried.
I cried because, after years of copy editing and being audited by the state, this press—my press—had made it. I cried because we belonged here, me and my authors and my little sister in her Casa Urraca-branded tee shirt. I cried because our tent was not adjacent to the roadway and we had to schlep all these boxes with all these books from here to there.
But remember: this is Tucson.
We hadn’t even emerged from the Soul, my sister and I, when a pack of orange-shirted volunteers swarmed us. These women could have schooled the Last of Us zombies on technique. Not a one of them could have been under eighty. They insisted on helping us load in.
“I am not making you carry my books!” I said, looking around to see if anyone but my sister was around to judge. (My sister would not balk at making the elderly carry books.)
One of the women looked me dead in the eye. She flexed her biceps at me. Yes, at me. I didn’t know biceps could be so directional.
“We got this,” she said.
So that is how I didn’t have to lift a single copy of a single book from the last many years of publishing. I left my sister to set up while I parked the car back where we started, a mile away.
The Festival of Books didn’t get any better than this moment—of belonging among my peers, of Making It, of being outgunned by the mutual aid society. But it wasn’t downhill from there, either. Not at all. In fact, we sold a lot of tee shirts.
The books are loss leaders for our booming tee shirt business. They lend a lot of credence to the message on the tees:
We also had some meaningful encounters with people without purchasing power.
Like one kid, somewhere between five and eleven (I’m bad with these things), who broke away from his caregivers to come ogle our table. He found himself drawn to the essay collections containing reading-level-appropriate discussions on, oh, art theory, sociopolitics, gender history, fascism.
“I really like these covers,” he said. “And they’re good books too. But I don’t know what this picture is.”
And that is how I gave someone else’s kid the birds-and-the-bees talk, only about abstract art instead of sex. I think I did the tougher one.
Then this eight-foot-tall college student lingered by the poetry table. He asked me, with a welcome lack of awareness of my ability to talk at length about things I care about, “So, what do you like about poetry?”
He went on to say he was “just living life today,” had heard about this book festival thing, thought he’d check it out. “I’m not really a reader,” he said. “I just have Steinbeck by my bed and I read it before going to sleep, because what else am I going to do?”
He regretted not bringing his wallet because he’d just gone to the gym and didn’t understand what he was about to walk through. I sent him home with something anyway. But it was the free bookmark that really lit him up.
The kids are going to be alright.
Frankly, so are the old people.
At least the bookish ones. Lifting books—maybe even reading some of them—looks like it’ll keep my demographic around for decades yet. Doing an annual Tucson Festival of Books workout might keep me capable and spry, too. That’s why I loaded out all the unsold books at the end by my own damn self.
My soul was lifted, my biceps jacked. And my sister, cooked.
Wanna learn more about this publishing thing I do?
You can:
Or just come to our table in Tucson next March. We’ll let you get book-buff by schlepping our book boxes, free of charge.
Even better: want to come write with me?
Through Casa Urraca Press, I will be co-leading (along with Jona Kottler) a weekend-long writer’s retreat in Abiquiú, New Mexico. The cottonwoods will be changing colors; we will have a chef making our meals; you’ll get one of our highly sought-after shirts. (We’re milking those puppies for all they’re worth.)
But really, check out the retreat and come write with us.
If you made it this far,
you knew this was coming. By liking and sharing this post, you help other readers find me. When other readers find me, I get to do more writing. And then you and all the readers get to do more—you guessed it—liking and sharing.
I mean trouble-making. Trouble-making and reading. That’s it.
A version of this piece appeared originally in the Abiquiú News.
I really enjoyed reading about the kids without buying power but especially the grannies with muscles that I aspire to be later in my life. I missed the festival this year but I’ll be there next year.
I lived in Tucson from 2009 to 2017. Thanks for the laughs! Your love for people shines through.