Chicago Printers Row Lit Fest 2026 - The First Ever Long Overdue Books Tent!

1 day ago

2 min read

Well, that was a lot of fun. And a pretty significant dream come true.

Background: Long Overdue Books has been exhibiting at Chicago's Printers Row Lit Fest since 2023. I always thought to myself, "You know, a tent would be kind of awesome." But we also had like 5 books...

This year, we had a tent. A tent! And when that sun was shining down at 85 degrees on Sunday or a couple hours of drizzle on Sunday, I loved having that tent.

And I loved seeing our debut authors (Ten Robinson, Keith Mulford, David Rose, and Miles Ducore) selling their brand-new book to readers for the first time. Or our "sophomore" authors Liza Fernandez Zapata, Bev Ottaviano, and Clayton Keith looking and sounding like pros. And of course, the Safe Landing table. Year 4 celebrating alongside Kim Jockl, Melody Smith, and Jim Borchers.

Another table there was Dennis and Brendan Buss promoting all 6 of Kate's books, this year with branded t-shirts. And then meeting in-person Ron Haines, Kristine Kurnit, and Paul Lennon who self-published through Diggypod. We had another Diggypod table with books that Christina Carroll shepherded all the way from Tecumseh, Michigan to Chicago. And every book in the tent was printed by Diggypod, ranging from a few years ago to a few last-minute reprints.

Thank you, Anica John, for her vision and passion to showcase authors and inspire more people to go from big idea to book to meeting your readers at a really cool event like this one.

And thank you to my Uber driver who saw just an absurd amount of book boxes and drove me to Printers Row anyways. If you gave me a 2-star review, I completely understand.

See you next year, Chicago!

Next stop: Texas Book Festival in Austin.