This coming Saturday, at 1:30, I’ll be signing copies of A Dance in the Street at Bookmamas in Irvington on the eastside of Indianapolis. There will be plenty of copies of the new book, and as a special feature we’ll be offering some earlier, hard-to-find, small books and magazines.
For example, a copy of the Indiana Writes “Bicentennial Issue” published in 1976 in Bloomington. This double issue — Vol. 1, nos. 3 and 4, which originally sold for $3.50 — is in mint condition. It contains beautiful graphics and text throughout, and includes one of my earliest short stories, “A Blue Willowware Tale.” You’re simply not going to find items like this on the web, Amazon.com, or eBay. We’re asking $30.
There are about a dozen other, similar items. Of course we’ll have copies of Cross this Bridge at a Walk, Les Barricades Mysterieuses, and After the Rain. The last two, still being offered at the original list price of $10 apiece, are no longer in print, and available copies are running out. When availability dips below 100 copies of each title, a time that is fast approaching, those prices will inevitably go up.
As things stand now, signed copies of the cloth first edition of Work, for the Night Is Coming, are listed as high as $85 by AbeBooks. We’ll be offering such a copy, signed in 1982, for $50 at the event on Saturday. It has a nick in the dustjacket, but otherwise it is unread and in mint condition.
Bookmamas is a terrific used- and rare-book store located at 9 South Johnson Avenue, Indianapolis, 46219. Please send your direct inquiries or advance book orders to info@bookmamas.com; the telephone is 317 375 3715. They’ll be happy to reserve a signed copy of Dance in the Street for you, to be picked up later at your convenience. If you need additional information about my earlier books and magazines, please contact me through this blog.
An apology: I was not able, after all, to display and sell books at the recent Woodruff Place Flea Market last weekend. When I got to the vendor’s space assigned to me, someone else had already claimed it. Sorry about that.
And a preview: There will be another book signing on the following weekend, June 16, at Three Sisters Books & Gifts in Shelbyville, Indiana, from noon to 2 p.m. That’s a Saturday.
The photo with the two flags? It’s Walt Whitman’s tomb, in Camden, New Jersey. I was there in late March of this year, after a visit to his house, also in Camden.
