The New York Book Fair held on a weekend in July, 1974 was the brainchild of our friend, Jackie Eubanks, a Brooklyn College research librarian. It was her idea “to organize the most individualistic people in the world” and “to educate librarians to change their minds about small presses.” (Read her interview with Marianne Yen in "Small Press Magazine" November/December 1984)
The first New York Book Fair crammed two hundred small press publishers and a parade of 12,000 curious browsers along the narrow aisles on three of what had been Huntington Hartford’s Gallery of Modern Art. Table after table displayed poetry books and magazines. At the same time poets held continuous readings in the lower level auditorium.
In the spring of ‘75 the second New York Book Fair was held at the old Federal Custom’s House in Lower Manhattan near Battery Park. The building was elegant, but in disrepair. I displayed a handful of little poetry chapbooks. The rooms, with wood paneling and parquet floor, were quiet.
Organizing the ’76 book fair began in Suzanne Zavrian’s Upper West Side apartment. An editor, writer and administrator in both commercial and small press publishing, Suzanne brought together a loose conglomeration of small press publishers to continue the tradition of “openness to the full range of alternative publishers, free space for those presses who cannot afford to pay for a table, free admission to the public, organizational independence, and the ability to enlist co-organizers of a high level of commitment, professionalism, and initiative.” (Read Ed Hogan’s interview with Suzanne Zavrian in CCLM’s “More than a Gathering of Dreamers” 1980).
A sporadic flow of thousands of visitors and opera goers strolled past the small press publishers who set up exhibits in the area that connected parking, subway and theater under the Lincoln Center Opera House. Three hundred small presses were eager to show their wares.
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