PulpFest 2023 will officially begin on Thursday, August 3, at 10 am, as our dealers begin to set up their displays for summertime’s pulp con! The dealers’ room will be open for exhibitors to set up until 4:45 pm. It will also be open for set-up on Friday, August 4, from 9 – 9:30 am.
If our dealers’ room is ready, we will also provide access to dealers and their helpers for set-up only on Wednesday evening, August 3, from 7 – 9:30 pm. Absolutely no buying or selling will be permitted on Wednesday evening. Any dealer or helper who appears to be shopping or bartering will be asked to leave the dealers’ room.
We recommend all of our dealers take advantage of our generous load-in and set-up times.
Access to the dealers’ room for unloading will be through the ballroom back entrance and the nearby banquet dock. Click here for a map showing the loading area of the hotel and here for a map of the Grand Ballroom at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry.
If you need additional help getting to the hotel and/or the loading area, please call or text Jack Cullers at 937.671.1574.
PulpFest welcomes dealer banners and other signage. However, such items cannot be attached to the hotel’s walls in any way, shape, or form.
Although the focus of PulpFest is pulp magazines and related materials, digests, vintage paperbacks, contemporary genre fiction and pulp reprints, men’s adventure and true crime magazines, first-edition hardcovers, series books, dime novels, original art, Big Little Books, B-movies, serials and related paper collectibles, old-time-radio shows, and Golden and Silver Age, as well as pulp-related comic books and games, are also allowed. Sexually explicit material — including Playboy, Penthouse, and Oui — is not allowed.
Advance registrations to PulpFest 2023 are no longer available. Our Paypal page was shut down at 10 pm on Sunday, July 30.
For those who have preregistered, you will be able to pick up your membership material at our registration desk outside the entrance to our dealers’ room at the DoubleTree. To find our registration desk, please look for our “Welcome Banner,” as pictured above.
For those of you who have not yet registered for PulpFest 2023, you will be able to do so at the door. All members — including dealers — will be able to register for the convention from 11 am to 4:45 pm on Thursday, August 3. Registration will take place at the entrance to our dealers’ room at the DoubleTree.
For the remainder of the convention, you will be able to register at the entrance as you are approaching the dealers’ room. Just stop at the registration desk during our dealers’ room hours. You’ll find our hours by clicking the schedule button on our home page. Or click here to link to our 2023 mobile schedule.
You will be able to pay for your registration at the door using cash, check, or credit card.
To help our registration proceed smoothly, please bring along a completed registration form. You can download a copy by clicking here or through the link found on our registration page.
A full weekend membership to PulpFest 2023 will cost $50 at the door. Daily memberships for Friday or Saturday will also be available for $25 per day. There will be no single-day memberships available for Thursday or Sunday. Children who are fifteen and younger and accompanied by a parent will be admitted free of charge. However, they still must be registered for the convention.
As FarmerCon XVIII and ERBFest 2023 are both part of PulpFest, there is no extra cost to attend FarmerCon or ERBFest. That’s 3 conventions for the price of one.
There will also be early-bird shopping in the dealers’ room from 11 to 4:45 pm on Thursday, August 3. It’s free for loyal attendees who help to defray the convention’s costs by staying at the DoubleTree. The cost is $80 for those who stay elsewhere. This includes a full weekend membership to PulpFest 2023 and its related conventions.
Following our early-bird shopping, pizza will be served in the Ember & Vine lounge of the DoubleTree. Thanks to the generosity of our dealers, PulpFest will celebrate the convention’s return with pizza at 5 pm on Thursday, August 3. All PulpFest attendees are invited to have a slice or two.
Our dealers’ room hours on Friday, August 4, and Saturday, August 5, will be from 9:30 am to 4:45 pm.
PulpFest 2023 will be celebrating “Chilling Sports,” “Pulp Heroes,” and a great deal more. We’ll be saluting the centennials of Weird Tales, Sport Story Magazine, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., as well as the 90th anniversaries of The Spider, Robert E. Howard’s Conan, and Doc Savage. And don’t forget about the other terrific conventions that will be held in conjunction with this year’s PulpFest — ERBFest 2023 and FarmerCon XVIII.
There will be programming during the evening hours beginning at 7 pm on August 3 through 5. We’ll also offer daytime programming on Friday, August 4, and Saturday, August 5, beginning at 2 pm and running until 3:55 pm. The general public is welcome to attend our programming events.
You can find additional details about all of our programming by clicking the schedule button found at the top of our home page. Or click here to link to our 2023 mobile schedule. Each event on the schedule is linked to a post that provides further information on that event. Just click on the event’s title. Copies of the schedule will also be printed on the back of all PulpFest 2023 membership badges.
Friday evening’s programming will also include a short PulpFest 2023 business meeting, starting at 7 pm. All PulpFest members are urged to attend.
PulpFest 2023 will be holding one live auction on Saturday evening, August 5. It will begin at 9 pm and feature 75 lots from the Carl Joecks estate and 80+ lots consigned by Scott and Linda Edwards of Dearly Departed Books. We will also have almost 60 lots submitted online by members of the convention. Additional lots may also be added during the convention itself. Click the auction button at the top of our page to learn more about this year’s PulpFest Auction.
We will have daily preview sessions in the Willow and Walnut Rooms at the DoubleTree. Watch for the auction banner in the corner of the hotel’s restaurant and lodge area. We’ll have paper catalogs there.
The preview sessions will run from 3:30 – 4:40 PM on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The times are also listed on our program schedule that you will find on the back of your convention badge.
We’ve also added a fourth preview time on Saturday evening from 8:05 – 8:45 pm due to a cancelation in our programming schedule. So there will be nearly 4 hours to view the auction lots.
You can also view photographs of the first 201 auction lots on the PulpFest website. Visit pulpfest.com/pulpfest-2023-estate-and-consignment-auction/ and scroll down to our auction photo catalog. Click here to download a PDF of our catalog. The catalog includes the Joecks Estate, the Dearly Departed Books consignment, and member submissions placed online.
To learn more about bidding in our auction or submitting items to our auction, we urge you to read our post, “Auction Update for PulpFest 2023 Members,” by clicking here.
On Sunday, August 6, the dealers’ room will be open to all members from 9 am to 1:30 pm as our dealers pack up. If you are looking for bargains, please be aware that buying and selling opportunities will be limited on Sunday.
For those attendees who would like to ship purchases made at PulpFest to their homes, there is a FedEx Office Print & Ship Center about a half-mile away from the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry. Located at 19095 Perry Highway in Mars, Pennsylvania, it is open from 9 am to 6 pm on Saturdays and from 12 pm to 6 pm on Sundays.
If you would like to lend a hand with the convention, please contact our chairman, Jack Cullers. You can reach him via email by writing to jack@pulpfest.com or by mail at 1272 Cheatham Way, Bellbrook, OH 45305.
If you have programming ideas, you can submit them to our programming director, Mike Chomko, at mike@pulpfest.com or via regular mail at 2217 W. Fairview Street, Allentown, PA 18104.
We are hoping that this year’s con will be one of our best. We have nearly 80 registered dealers and have been receiving member registrations every day, many from people who have never previously attended PulpFest. If you’ve been thinking about attending, but have yet to pull the trigger, please book a room without delay. You can try calling 1-800-222-8733 or 724-776-6900 to reach our host hotel. Perhaps there is a vacancy. By staying at the DoubleTree, you help to ensure the convention’s continued success.
Other hotel options include the Hampton Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, or Home2 Suites. They’re all just a few miles away from our host hotel. Click here to learn more.
If anyone is looking for a room, we may be able to put you in touch with someone in need of a roommate. Click our “contact” button at the top of the site and send us a message.
The DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry is located at 910 Sheraton Drive in Mars, Pennsylvania, just outside the city of Pittsburgh. It is easy to find at the intersection of three major roadways: Interstate 79, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and State Route 19. Please click here for a map of the hotel’s location or click the map along the right side of our home page. There is ample free parking surrounding the hotel.
If you are exhibiting any symptoms associated with COVID-19, please stay at home. You should not attend PulpFest. Isolate and avoid contact with others, rest, and drink fluids. Call your healthcare provider if your symptoms worsen.
Although we can’t force anyone, we hope that everyone who plans to attend PulpFest 2023 will be vaccinated against COVID-19. We have many older members who attend PulpFest. Please keep them in mind. Remember, we’re all in this together.
Please also be aware that our attendees come to PulpFest to celebrate and learn about popular culture, socialize, and enjoy themselves. Therefore, all attendees of PulpFest are asked to keep opinions of a political, religious, or societal nature to themselves.
If any convention attendee seeks to importune a PulpFest member — including the convention’s dealers — with his or her opinions, he or she will be asked to leave PulpFest.
Although you have a right to your opinions, our members — including dealers — are not at the convention to be lectured about politics, religion, and so on.
If you have other questions, please refer to our FAQ page. Hopefully, we’ll have it covered for you there. If not, there is contact information on the page listing who to ask.
The PulpFest 2023 organizing committee – Mike Chomko, Jack and Sally Cullers, Bill Lampkin, Sara Light-Waller, and Craig McDonald – is looking forward to seeing all of you at the convention. Have a safe trip to Mars for summertime’s pulp con.
Sponsored by Heritage Auctions, the PulpFest 2023 welcome banner was adapted by William Lampkin from Margaret Brundage’s original cover art for Weird Tales for October 1933. We’ll be saluting the centennial of “The Unique Magazine” throughout the coming weekend.
Pulp magazines are not the only collectibles that are featured at PulpFest. You’ll also find Golden and Silver Age comic books, as well as comics featuring pulp heroes at the convention. The first and only issue of Western Publishing’s Doc Savage comic book — dated November 1966 with cover art by James Bama — is one of many examples of the kind of comic book that you might find at PulpFest 2023. We’ll be celebrating the 90th anniversary of Doc Savage Magazine at this year’s PulpFest.
Our ERBFest logo was designed by PulpFest advertising director William Lampkin. Along with FarmerCon, it’s one of two conventions that will be held within PulpFest 2023.
Our PulpFest 2023 printed postcard was adapted by William Lampkin from The Phantom Detective for January 1934, with cover by Rafael M. DeSoto, and Thrilling Sports for Winter 1947, with cover by Rudolph Belarski. Additional artwork was contributed by Mark Wheatley.
The PulpFest auction banner was adapted by William Lampkin from Rafael DeSoto’s cover art for the January 1934 issue of Standard’s The Phantom Detective.
Our poster for “Conan the Multimedia Barbarian” was adapted by William Lampkin from Renato Casaro’s poster art for John Milius‘ 1982 movie, Conan the Barbarian. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones, Conan the Barbarian was produced by Dino De Laurentiis. We’ll be saluting the 90th anniversary of Robert E. Howard’s Conan and other pulp heroes at PulpFest 2023.
Our poster for “Sport Story Magazine and Its Pulp Offspring” was adapted by William Lampkin from Chester Bloom’s cover art for Sports Action for August 1947. Although all attendees of PulpFest are asked to keep opinions of a political, religious, or societal nature to themselves, you’re welcome to talk about other topics, including your favorite sports teams.
