2024 Event Management Instructors

Dean Elliott batTzedek

Elliott has been a bookseller since 2010, and an event manager since 2012. For ten years she ran the events program at Big Blue Marble Bookstore in Philadelphia, a small store in a progressive urban neighborhood. Since 2021 she's been event manager at Main Point Books in Wayne, PA, a store that doubled in size in early 2023. Elliott is also the Member Manager for NAIBA, and the administrator for the Professional Booksellers School. When not selling books or training booksellers, Elliott is a poet, translator, and liturgist.

See her in office hours to learn more about: building event programs in small stores, creative and community events, inventive partnerships, tools for working with amateur/local authors, and hosting reading/writing series

Instructor Molly Olivo

Molly is the Book Buyer/Book department manager/Bookseller/Event coordinator for Child’s Play Toys and Books. Child's Play has three locations in the DC metro aea, selling children's books, toys, games and othe fun things. Molly is also a member of ABA's ABC Council, and mother of one wild thing.  She's been a bookseller for 12 years, an event coordinator for 14 (including a previous position at a children’s museum), and a frontlist buyer for 8. Her focus, in terms of events, has always been big picture planning, in-school author events, book fairs, and staff-led events.

See her in office hours to learn more about: children's events, book fairs/school-focused events, building relationships with schools, how to use strategic planning to grow your event program (and your store!)

Instructor Kit Little

With nearly 15 years of experience in indie bookstores and author events, both in person and virtual, Kit has filled the roles of handseller, book buyer, sideline purchaser, merchandiser, event staff trainer, supervisor, educator, and so much more. She spent over a decade as Director of Marketing and Events for PK Sindwani at Towne Book Center in Collegeville, PA, helping to expand it to the largest indie bookstore in the state. She oversaw a robust author event program, an author tour program with more than 40 schools; 10 book clubs; and community event partnerships with four area libraries, a local college, an area hospital, and numerous community groups and businesses. Kit also serves as Executive Administrator to Eileen Dengler, Executive Director of NAIBA, and designs and manages technology and communications for the entire Professional Booksellers School. She is also the school's first Certified Professional Bookseller.

See her in office hours to learn more about: running events onsite and offsite, school visits and in-store book fairs, staffing and managing events, marketing and promotions, building community partnerships, building effective publicity kits and pitches and using them to go after the authors you want, and publisher communications and relations

Instructor Julie Slavinsky

Julie Slavinsky is the Director of Events for Warwick’s Bookstore. She has been in the book business for eighteen years, has been with Warwick’s for thirteen of those, twelve of them as the Director of Events.  She was born and raised in Los Angeles, has a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Diego State University and has called San Diego home since 1979. Her passion is reading and connecting readers and authors.

See her in office hours about: large-scale ticketed events, effective community partnerships, event programs in large stores, grid/event proposals, virtual events, and managing author visits

Guest Instructor Kathy Ellen Davis

Kathy Ellen (entire first name) Davis is NAIBA's Social Media Manager. She has years of experience bookselling, talking about books online, teaching others how to do social media, and doing social media work for bookselling associations. She loves seeing bookstores succeed in their social media efforts, and has many ideas on how to make that happen. She loves bookstore events and can run a mean signing line and/or hang out with the author the entire time and make them feel welcome.

See her in office hours to learn more about: marketing, creating a toolbox of different types of posts, steps to take to feel good instead of stressed about your social media

Guest Instructor Candice Huber

Candice Huber (they/them) is a sixth generation New Orleanian who owns New Orleans’ premier geeky, queer, and progressive bookstore, Tubby & Coo’s Mid-City Book Shop, named after their grandparents. Candice also serves on the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee and on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Task Force for the American Booksellers Association and is a writing, editing, publishing, and virtual event consultant. In the before-times, they hosted The Writers’ Forum on WRBH Reading Radio, focusing on interviewing science fiction and fantasy authors. Candice established TALES Publishing in 2018, which has thus far published three books.

See them in office hours to learn more about: event programs in online/pop-up stores, virtual events that sell books, using social media and understanding metrics, overall project management/organization, and establishing lasting relationships with publishers/publicists