Rain Taxi is Minnesota’s own micro-AWP conference, and I look forward to it each year. The events, the local vendors and authors, and the speakers invite us into an exciting community of books. The 2016 Rain Taxi events take place October 14th and 15th in the Progress Center and Fine Arts Building of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. New Rivers Press will once again be hosting a table in the book fair on October 15th from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This year, we are hoping to make our mark on Rain Taxi in our own special way with the introduction of Blind Date with a Book. If you’ve never had the pleasure of a blind date with a book before, the idea is simple. We have wrapped some of our older titles in heavy paper and written a few descriptive words on them (type of book, main theme, author origin, etc.) and you can select which book appeals to you most. This ‘blind’ book picking really helps you not judge a book by its cover! They are only $3 each, and we have plenty to look through. Visit our booth and feel like a kid on Christmas, weighing and feeling each book to try and find out their secrets. No peeking though!
In addition to that new feature, we also have all of our newest titles available for sale at the book festival. New Rivers Press is happy to announce that our three new books of poetry: Tim Nolan’s The Field, Carol Kapaun Ratchenski’s A Beautiful Hell, and Michelle Mathees’s Flucht will all be on sale, the latter two will have been released just that day.
There will also be free prize drawings throughout the day. Come visit our newest authors to get the inside scoop on their inspiration for the book, the creative process, and what all we do for our authors at New Rivers Press. Tim, Carol and Michelle—the authors mentioned above—will all be there to sign and talk about their new books; additionally, Julie Gard, author of last year’s Home Studies, will be there as well. Not only will we have authors to chat with, but you can meet students and interns of the NRP publishing program that we offer at MSU Moorhead.
Lastly, be sure to check out our table for information on our new T-shirt contest. We are seeking any creative minds to design and pitch us an (appropriate) snarky T-shirt for events just like Rain Taxi, as well as our online store. You can submit your ideas in person at Rain Taxi, but you can also share them via our social media. Whoever has the largest number of likes, retweets, shares, repins, and the like after the window closes will win the contest, earning the grand prize of $50, a New Rivers Press tote bag, and their design featured on shirts at literary conventions and in our online store.
You can find more information about Rain Taxi and their scheduled events on their website. We hope to see you there!