Lance Fensterman is a very busy guy. He’s the showrunner for not just New York Comic-Con, but also the new York Anime Fest AND the BEA (Book Expo America), the annual schmoozefest for everything book related. This year’s BEA is being held next week in LA, where they buy more books per year than in New York, or so we’re often told by Angelenos. Anyway WE WILL BE THERE, and we’ve already heard from a few peeps who want to get together and our dance card is filling fast, so call, email or text of you wanna hang, or know where to do it. We’re staying at the downtown hotel with the spinning bar, so you know where we’ll be.

Wait…where were we? Oh yeah, Lance Fensterman. Anyway, the BEA is a celebrity/author fest with the biggest names in the business — it’s wall to wall superstar authors. The author signings list has been posted, and Lance has the details:

How big is the autographing program at BEA going to be this year? Consider these names are just a handful of the authors that will be appearing on just one day of the three day program.

Neil Gaiman, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Brooke Shields, Jon Scieszka, Robert F Kennedy Jr. , Judy Blume, George Hamilton, Garth Stein, Anita Shreve, Seth Kantner, Brad Meltzer, Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Cory Doctorow, Kate DiCamillo, Sherman Alexie, Laura Numeroff, Eoin Colfer, Paul Feig, Berkeley Breathed, Brian Selznick, Dennis Lehane, R.L. Stine, Scott McCloud, Jeff Smith, Gary Hart…

The official numbers on autographing: 926 signings (auto area and in booth) plus another 100+ in booth that came in after the print deadline (I’ll try and get those online soon).


It’s kind of scary to see how many of Our Kind have infiltrated that list.

– The Autographing line-up is here, and with its LA proximity, everyone from Ernest Borgnine to Brooke Shields will be signing. Maybe we’re just old or jaded or whatever but there was almost no one on the list that made us go…WHO-AHHH! We gotta meet that person. Have we really met everyone we ever wanted to meet? Is that it?

Well there was one name: Sean Stewart, the lead writer on THE BEAST, the AI interactive game that was one of the greatest icons of the early interactive media, and one that all ARGs (alternate reality games) have been chasing ever since. So there you have it; we still want to meet Sean Stewart someday.

7 COMMENTS

  1. Ah… the last time I was at a Book Expo in L.A. was back in … 1997? Marvel was distributed by Publishers Group West (got Spidey’s autograph!), Viz was just starting to roll out their Pokemon titles, Fantagraphics had just started distributing to the trade, and Spawn was the only Image property available to bookstores, via Random House. The big comics event (held every year) was the Andrews McMeel comics signing, a ticketed event held at the end of the show, where their group of cartoonists would authograph free copies of whatever the latest collection was. Some signed lithographs. Oh, the Staples Center was still under construction.

    Now they have a whole day of graphic novel goodness!

    I’m staying out by the Hollywood Racetrack (using a friends employee discount, $40 a night), so I’ll have to play Cinderella with the Metro. I’ll bring more of those “nutritional supplements”!

  2. Batton and I will be there starting on Wednesday night, when I’ll be moderating an informal panel (featuring Sergio Aragones, Mark Evanier, and Denis Kitchen) at a special Will Eisner art show at Storyopolis in Studio City (RSVP’s are needed: http://www.storyopolis.com).

    At BEA proper, Batton will be signing at the AtlasBooks booth (#846) on Saturday morning at 10:30 (same time as Stan Lee will also be signing there), and he’ll be signing at the Publishers Marketing Association (PMA) booth on Sunday at noon.

    I’m hoping to catch some of the Saturday “Graphic Novel Day” programming–

    Jackie Estrada
    http://www.exhibitapress.com

  3. Sean Stewart is such an amazing writer — I didn’t really pay attention to him until he and Steve Lieber created an 8-page mini-comic that served as a connected short story to his new book PERFECT CIRCLE. Since then I’ve read both it and his novel MOCKINGBIRD and he’s fanastic. Definitely on the list of writers I’d want to meet.

  4. I don’t know about you, but I think Ernest Borgnine IS worth a who-ahhh. A little one. Well, maybe not. It’s late.

  7. Gary Hart. Wow. Time-travel does exist.

    Diamond is hosting a cocktail party on Saturday at 4:00pm – booth# 4700 West Hall. Come say hi!

Comments are closed.