photo credit: Mary Reagan of NYC Photo

Though the ink is barely dry on the first festival - which could not have asked for better weather and a more perfect setting in Borough Hall Plaza, in the midst of a Farmer's Market of fresh produce and baked goods - borough mayor Marty Markowitz is already looking ahead to next year. As he announced in the middle of the noontime event with Jonathan Lethem, Emily Barton & Paula Fox (interrupting Lethem in the process of reading what would be a hilariously poignant account of adventures on the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station) the Festival will return next year, but spread out over two days, not just one.

Presumably Markowitz repeated his announcement during other events, inside and out, but if the Festival is to return, some changes will have to be made, as is often the case. The good? The location and weather, with blue & white stalls of representative publishers dotting the Plaza; the focus on small presses and literary journals, from Coffee House Press to Tin House, Small Spiral Notebook to Two Dollar Radio, Melville House to Open City (still celebrating Edward St. Aubyn's surprise Booker shortlisting for MOTHER'S MILK, which was published here last fall and whose paperback print run will be on the order of about 40,000 copies - a phenomenal amount for a house normally accustomed to printing between 3,000 and 5,000 copies); and the crowd, heavily skewed towards those who knew literary fiction and cared about it deeply.

The bad? Not so much bad as unfortunate that the Courthouse didn't accomodate the SRO-plus crowd. I didn't mind standing in the back during the Lethem/Barton/Fox reading, because then I could shoot footage (available here soon) and not get in people's way too much; but when the lines held up the Gary Shteyngart/Jonathan Ames reading by a half hour and the sweltering heat and claustrophobic air did not abate, it certainly curttailed my ability to attend further indoor events. Having such a good outdoor event required a tradeoff for what took place inside.

But outside was where the action was, from main stage readings of poetry, crime fiction (by Lawrence Block, Tim McLoughlin & Glenville Lovell, who showed up at the 11th hour and 59th minute) and Brooklyn luminaries long past; to Pete Hamill, smoking a cigarette and gamely dishing out advice to a new fan (who was told by his friend to "read Forever! It's a great place to start!"); to the Target children's pavillion, where future readers scribbled furiously with crayons to create masterpieces of their own and young adult authors such as Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfield and David Klass shared fantastical tales with the crowd (Westerfield's advice: "you can fix anything by adding a vampire"); to the Farmer's Market types, somewhat puzzled by all these bookish people wandering around but grateful for the extra spike in sales.

So yes, there are lots of good reasons to call this town Booklyn, as Sara Gran titled her essay last week. And logistical issues aside, there's little doubt in my mind that the festival was a success.