Thank you to all the writers and publishers who turned out for the winter roundup at The Old Court yesterday. We didn’t draw as large a crowd as last year and sales were considerably lower, but as a small convention of people in the word trade the event was a success. We appreciate the hospitality of The Old Court— Finbarr Sheehan and the staff. I’ve been writing and publishing in this area since the mid-1970s, and the current vitality is the best I’ve seen. There was not much of a community of literary types when I started out, but you can see that now at an event like the one yesterday. Not only were resident activists like Ryan Gallagher of Bootstrap Press and book-cover designer Jim Higgins on hand, but a couple of Lowell favorites, prize-winning poet Matt Miller and critically praised writer and poet Judith Dickerman-Nelson, came down from New Hampshire and Vermont respectively. Anthony Febo of Free Verse stopped by. Our colleague here, Dick, was promoting the forthcoming “Legends of Lowell” and book-artist Susan K. Gaylord of Newburyport made a fresh set of the collectible edition of South Common haiku that we introduced last year on Earth Day. We had top-notch fiction writers and long-time history publishers. John Wooding and Bob Forrant had the Baywood Publishing scholarly publications about work environment, occupational safety, and labor. Jack Neary had a table full of his plays. Lloyd Corricelli brought the Sons of Liberty Publishing banner and his robust list of novels, stories, and more. In the room were Dave Daniel, Pauline Golec, Corey Sciuto, Steve O’Connor, J.F. Dacey, Dave Robinson, Jacqueline Malone, Tony Sampas, James Ostis, Rosemary Noon, Janet Egan, Paul Hudon, Michael Hoerman, Al Bouchard,  Steve Edington, and others.

Poet Matt Miller signing books (photo by Paul Sweeney)

(Photo by Paul Sweeney)