Dan's Pumps Up Local Authors

Still smarting from literary events getting hijacked by movie stars with ghost-written cookbooks, to quote Jay McInerney?

Just a few short months after the East Hampton Library's 9 Annual Authors Night, which looked more like Black Friday at Walmart USA when Gwyneth Paltrow and Alec Baldwin showed up, Dan's Papers put together a nicely researched poster of local authors whose books might make for some stocking stuffers.

Oliver Peterson drafted "5 Picks For Readers and Writers," and it was impressive not only to see some of the old guard (Steinbeck, Vonnegut) but that serious contemporary writers got a mention. Kaylie Jones' novels "Speak Now" and "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries" features along with Hilary Thayer Hamann, whose novel "Anthropology of an American Girl" saw more resurrections than an episode of AMC's "Walking Dead."

Jones used to teach at Southampton College and continued on as a professor in the MFA in Creative Writing program when Stony Brook University took over the campus. Not sure if she's still there, but she recently stinted as the editor of Akashic's Noir series where she contributed a short story based in the Hamptons. Translation: her Hamptons ties run deep, unlike some others we won't mention. (Ahem--tomwolfe-Ahem) Excuse us.

AWESOME: Not seeing Nelson Demille's cover on the tapestry

NOT AWESOME: Seeing Dan Rattiner's "In The Hamptons" on the tapestry. Come'on, man. I know he's your boss and all, but...

ALSO...surprised to see James Frey on the tapestry, as I had no idea he spent any time in the Hamptons. Good for him. (Always thought he got a raw deal over the whole Oprah thing. There's truth and then there's emotional truth.)