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Friday, March 29, 2024

Authors in The Villages will be featured in upcoming BookExpo

Mark Newhouse 1
Mark Newhouse, the founder of BookExpo, at the 2020 event. Mark has won numerous regional and national awards for his Holocaust trilogy, The Devil’s Bookkeepers. He also has also written a series of children’s books.

The last live and in-person BookExpo was in January 2020, led by Villages writer and management guru Jack Hayes. The 2021 edition was canceled in the midst of COVID-19, lack of vaccines, widespread fear and rising cabin fever. Now, post-pandemic, the BookExpo is on again and scheduled for Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022 at the Eisenhower Recreation Center in The Villages.

BookExpo was conceived around 2002 when retired teacher Mark Newhouse moved to the Village of Virginia Trace.

“There were clubs for all kinds of things, but nothing for writers,” he remembers. The result was the formation of the Writers League of The Villages (WLOV), now a registered non-profit with some 150 members. Partnering with an early version of the Learning Academy, the first BookExpo was billed as a “Literary Festival” and was held at The Villages Charter School.

Over the intervening years it became the Central Florida BookExpo, moved to more spacious quarters at Eisenhower Recreation Center and formed a partnership with The Villages Recreation Department.

Manijeh Badiozamani
Villages author Manijeh Badiozamani at BookExpo2020. She has a new book coming out in July, “One Summer in my Life: A Memoir in Short Stories.”

BookExpo follows the usual community book fair model. Authors have a six-foot table in conference rooms filled with tables to display their books for sale, mix with buyers, talk and sign copies. There’s an energetic hubbub in the rooms, the buzz of conversations and people moving, stopping and talking. For the 2022 edition, BookExpo will occupy virtually all of the Eisenhower Recreation Center space, enough for about 100 tables and authors.

While BookExpo is about selling and buying books from local and regional authors, it’s also a unique community event where Villages authors welcome their friends and neighbors and get to showcase their work. Friends and neighbors get to proudly visit and chat with a published author, buy their books and have then personally signed. The last BookExpo had some 80 authors and about 3,000 reading enthusiasts and would-be writers attending

As with past BookExpos, the book genres will include everything from mysteries and suspense to memoirs and non-fiction. Some authors have coffee table books and others have slim volumes of poetry.

Since the Writers League of The Villages is the co-sponsor, members get the first opportunity to reserve tables until the end of August. After that, BookExpo is open to all and any authors. For WLOV members information is being distributed through multiple email blasts and in the WLOV Newsletter. Information will be sent to book clubs and writers’ groups in Florida starting in early September.

Marsha Shearer 1
Villages author Marsha Shearer at BookExpo2020. Her new book, “Life After Trump: Seeking a More Perfect Union,” has just been released.

Authors with a half table can sell only one title; those with the full six-foot table may sell any number of titles. One restriction is that the author of any books being sold must be present to sign them. Books must have an ISBN number and be published before Dec. 31, 2021.

The official charity of BookExpo2022 will again be Sozo Kids/Children of the Forest. Representatives of the organization will be on hand to talk about helping the organization led by Rev. Dave Houck.

“I’ve done 13 or more BookExpos,” says founder Newhouse. “I always have a good time, meet lots of great people, and learn something new.”

In addition, BookExpo2022 will feature speakers on writing and book publishing for general audiences.

For answers to questions about BookExpo2022 and to receive a table reservation form, email wlovbookexpo@gmail.com.

John W Prince is a writer, Villager and chairperson of BookExpo2022. If you know of someone with a “Good Story and a Good Book,” contact him at John@HallardPress.com.

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