Bouchercon 2009 report
November 9th, 2009
Bouchercon 2009, Elementary, My Dear Indy, has now come and gone, and the Midwest Chapter has much to be proud of.
Awards
First, we were well represented in both Barry and Anthony Award nominations. For the Barry, we had
• Sean Chercover, William Kent Krueger, and Michael Koryta; Best Novel
• Michael Stanley (half of which is our own Stanley Trollip) and Julie Kramer; Best First Novel
• Julie Hyzy and Max Allen Collins: Best Paperback Original.
For the Anthony, we had
• Sean Chercover and William Kent Kruger; Best Novel
• Julie Kramer; Best First Novel
• Julie Hyzy and Max Allen Collins; Best Paperback Original
• Jeffrey Marks; Best Critical Non-fiction
• Sean Chercover; Best Short Story
• Jon & Ruth Jordan and Gary Warren Niebuhr; Special Service Awards.
Those nominations make a great statement about the talent in this chapter.
And the winners were:
• Julie Hyzy, our MWMWA President, took home both the Barry and the Anthony for State of the Onion.
• Sean Chercover took home the Anthony for “A Sleep Not Unlike Death” from Hardcore Hardboiled.
• Jeffrey Marks the Anthony for Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography,
• Jon & Ruth Jordan won the Anthony’s Special Service category.
Congratulations to all the nominees and the winners!
Participation and MWA HOT TICKET
Because Indianapolis is in our chapter, we had many, many members there. I think I counted nearly 50 active and affiliate members, and we were represented on at least 28 panels.
Plus, our chapter ran the MWA HOT TICKET program, which enabled ten lucky fans to get an hour with one of eleven bestselling MWA authors. Among the authors participating was one of our own big names, Sara Paretsky. The program was a major success with both the authors and the fans. We received written thank you notes from Carolyn Hart and Sue Grafton, and all of the other authors expressed verbal thanks and said what a wonderful time they’d had. Many of those fans who won tickets said it was the highlight of their Bouchercon experience. Special thanks to our hosting authors who helped things move smoothly. They included Michael Black, Larry Sweazy, Libby Hellman, Jess Lourey, Julie Hyzy, Kit Ehrman, Luisa Buehler, Tony Perona, Raymond Benson, Jim Doherty, Ted Hertel, Deb Baker, Marlis Day, Albert Bell, Carl Brookins, Michael Dymmoch, Beverle Graves Myers, Joanna Slan, Jeanne Dams, Julie Kramer, Jack Fredrickson, Jamie Freveletti, and Sam Reaves. All of these authors had the chance to display their books and do some soft-selling to fans, hopefully gaining them some name recognition and sales. That was all part of MWMWA’s goal, not only to promote the chapter but also some of our authors as well.
In summary, Bouchercon was a huge success!
Tony Perona, Vice President
Categories: Hot Ticket, Meetings, Uncategorized | Tags: Bouchercon, Hot Ticket
