Tuesday morning, American Booksellers Association CEO Allison Hill stood before a crowd of booksellers packing the Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and welcomed them to Winter Institute 2026.
Noting that some booksellers, authors, and publishers had been unable to get to Pittsburgh after a blizzard that all but halted travel from the Eastern Seaboard, Hill exclaimed that she was "thrilled to see all of you made it!" Her subsequent shout-out to the booksellers of Minneapolis and St. Paul for their courage and commitment to their communities during ICE's deployment brought 1,000 booksellers to their feet for a standing ovation.
Recalling a challenging hike that she once made in the Czechoslavakia mountains, Hill compared a journey that included a series of unexpected switchbacks with the current landscape for booksellers. "Each turn seemed to demand more from me than the last," she said, describing steeper and steeper terrain. "What kept me going were moments of grace."
Hill praised booksellers for their responses to such challenges as the pandemic, the proliferation of disinformation, and bigotry against the LGBTQ community, stating, "The world is no longer mapped by a five-year plan." She expressed hope that booksellers, too, have "moments of grace that kept you going—and I hope this week at Winter Institute offers you that same grace. We see you, what you're doing is so important, and we're all in this together."
Hill then introduced former Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton, who officially announced the title of his forthcoming memoir, Take My Word for It (Random House, Nov.), and Janet "Miss Janet" Webster Jones, whose store, Source Booksellers in Detroit was PW’s 2025 bookstore of the year. The two engaged in a conversation billed as “Reading Is Power: How Storytelling and Imagination Can Liberate Us and Shape a Better World.”
Jones told Burton, “I see in you the full embodiment of our literary ecosystem,” whether championing lifelong learning or taking on media roles, particularly uplifting Black audiences, as well as writing fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry. Burton agreed that “part of my mission has been using prevailing technologies in the pursuit of education” and sharing that passion for knowledge and positive representation. He recalled the late Jesse Jackson’s slogan, “Each one, teach one,” reminding the attentive audience that “we all have something of value to offer.”
Burton closed with a mention of his three storytelling heroes: Roots author Alex Haley, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and last but not least, Fred Rogers, who made his home in Pittsburgh. Burton said he’d seen a mural of Rogers the previous evening, “and I thought, ‘he’s here.’ You all, don’t forget you are in Mister Rogers’s Neighborhood for the next few days! And so I say to you: Act accordingly!”
Tuesday's events at Winter Institute included the opening of the galley room; an editors buzz lunch at which industry leaders each pitched two books for the year ahead; and a Puzzle Mania! night with New York Times Games editor Joel Fagliano. Although extreme weather kept Fagliano from attending the show in person, he led via video a roomful of booksellers in games from his recent Puzzle Mania! (Authors Equity, out now), while Authors Equity cofounder Madeline McIntosh ranged about the room, rewarding the victors with prizes.
