On this day when we honor America’s laborers, PulpFest is pleased to announce that the organizing committee is working to find a new venue for our 2017 convention. Due to the business decision of the Hyatt Regency to concentrate on larger groups than the 400+ pulp fans who have been attending the Columbus-based PulpFest since 2009, the summertime pulp con will have a new home come next year. It’s a tough job, but your organizing committee — particularly convention chairman Jack Cullers and volunteer coordinator Sally Cullers — are up for the task. No wonder we’ve decided to call our 2017 confab, “Summer’s Hardboiled Pulp Con!”
Our programming theme for 2017 will be “Hardboiled Dicks, Dangerous Dames, and a Few Psychos.” Mike Chomko, the convention’s marketing and programming director, is already lining up a fine slate of pulp culture scholars. We’ll have presentations on DIME DETECTIVE, the villains of THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, “The Dangerous Dames of Kenneth Robeson,” Hollywood detective Dan Turner, Señorita Scorpion and the Domino Lady, Philip José Farmer, and much more.
PulpFest 2017 will also be honoring the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert Bloch, author of PSYCHO, and offering live theater on Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon. The convention is pleased to announce that the Narada Radio Company will be bringing their Pulp-Pourri Theatre to next summer’s PulpFest. Based in Corpus Christi, Pulp-Pourri Theatre is an all-new audio drama anthology series that has its origins in vintage pulp fiction, but presents its stories in the modern way. Pete Lutz is the company’s producer-director. You can sample their work online or via iTunes. The group will also be performing several readings at the convention.
PulpFest auction coordinator J. Barry Traylor is already lining up some exciting material for next year’s Saturday Night Auction. Once again, we’ll be offering pulps from the collection of Woody Hagadish. A longtime collector and reader of books and pulps, Woody often attended the old Pulpcon and bought a wide array of magazines. Primarily interested in western pulps — particularly WILD WEST WEEKLY — Woody was a reading enthusiast and enjoyed his collection. We’ll be offering magazines from such diverse genres as sports fiction, air stories, westerns, science fiction, and the detective field. The estate is hoping to find good homes for all of these collectibles, getting them to the people who would best appreciate them, as Woody Hagadish had done during his lifetime.
Advertising director and PULPSTER editor William Lampkin is putting together some knock-out concepts for our 2017 marketing campaign as well as planning our award-winning program book. If you’re new to PulpFest and are not familiar with the magazine that Bill puts together each year, a few copies remain of our 2016 PULPSTER. Centered around “90 years of AMAZING STORIES,” a collection of essays on the history and legacy of the first all-science-fiction pulp magazine written by many of its editors, including founder Hugo Gernsback, Howard Browne, Joseph Wrzos (Joe Ross), Barry N. Malzberg, PulpFest 2016 Guest of Honor Ted White, Elinor Mavor, and Patrick L. Price, you can learn more about THE PULPSTER #25 and how to acquire a copy by visiting http://pulpcon.org/2016/08/copies-pulpster-25-available/.
Of course we couldn’t market PulpFest 2017 without technical and social media director Chuck Welch keeping all of the nuts and bolts of our various websites in line. As always, Chuck is tinkering in the background to make sure you won’t meet up with any glitches when you try to register for next summer’s convention. Of course, our registration page won’t be ready until we have a time and place for next year’s convention. So please stay tuned by visiting pulpcon.org at least once a week. We’ll be offering a new post every Monday morning around 9 AM, eastern time. Alternately, you can read our posts via our facebook site or catch our tweets by following us via our Twitter page.
(While training for the priesthood in his native Puerto Rico, Rafael DeSoto began taking private art lessons with a local artist. He emigrated to the United States in 1923 and soon found work at an advertising company. He began to draw interior story illustrations for Street & Smith’s western pulp magazines in 1930. Two years later, he started to sell freelance cover paintings to all the major pulp magazine publishers including Clayton, Dell, Fiction House, Popular, Street & Smith, and the Thrilling Group. It was DeSoto who created the cover art for the November 1941 issue of Popular Publications’ DIME DETECTIVE MAGAZINE.
DeSoto continued to produce pulp covers up until the demise of the industry during the 1950s. He also sold freelance illustrations to slick magazines, many paperback book covers, and covers and interior story illustrations for men’s adventure magazines. The artist retired from freelance illustration in 1964 and began teaching at the State University of New York, Farmingdale. He taught art for the rest of his life and embarked on a very successful career as a portrait artist.)
