None of these images have been doctored; I truly had the best day ever as a vendor at Ozy Fest 2017! The New York Times called Ozy Fest “Ted meets Coachella” and I didn’t find the lie. The all-day party in Central park was filled with amazing panels and performances featuring dope authors, entrepreneurs, comedians, and artists like Jason Derulo, Samantha Bee, Mark Cuban, Malcolm Gladwell, Jill Biden, Talib Kwali, Issa Rae, Eddie Huang (thanks for signing all my books), Katie Couric, and many more.

How The Lit. Bar Ended up Leading a Booth in Ozy Fest’s Good Sh*t Bazaar:

Ozy Editor-in-Chief, Carlos Watson, discovered me several months ago and found my 16-year-old-runaway-turned-movie-ticket-collector-turned-break dancing-banana-turned-HR-professional-turned-indie-bookseller story compelling enough to feature on their Bronx Tales video series. (Seriously: Hear about my rolling stone days here.) I can’t believe he remembered me when it was time to choose vendors!

And here we are! I could not have pulled this off without my amazing team! No, literally I would have died; it was crazy labor-intensive and then exceptional customer service happened.

I’ve done pop-up shops before, but this is the first time I had a whole booth (rather than a table) with the space to give off some real Lit. Bar vibes. Shout out to Ozy for assigning me the booth right at the entrance of the Good Sh*t Bazzar.

My homeless bookstore cleans up nice (still looking for a permanent location)…

 

Issa Book Signing!

I’ve also been the bookseller for book launch/signing events before, but Ozy Fest was my first time hosting an author signing. I’m honored to say my book-signing cherry was popped by the fabulous, Cara Alwill Leyba. Cara’s most recent self-published title, Girl Code, was picked up by Portfolio Books (Penguin RandomHouse); so I slid in her dm and was thrilled when she accepted my invitation. If she sounds familiar, it’s because you know her brand The Champagne Diet or recall me reviewing a previous book of hers. She was so sweet and didn’t complain about me giving her a pen over a sharpie to sign with; she’s the one.

Thank you to everyone who shopped The Lit. Bar! Ya’ll kept my booth lit the entire 7 1/2 hours. My feet don’t love you, but I do. Good Sh*t!

One more cause we cute…