The deadline for advance registrations to PulpFest 2010 is Tuesday, July 27, at 10 PM. Advance registrations will not be accepted after Tuesday. Payments made through Paypal will not be accepted after 10 PM on July 27.

Although PulpFest 2010 officially gets under way on Friday, July 30, the convention’s organizing committee is urging dealers to arrive on Thursday to set up their displays. The dealers’ room will be open from 6 PM to 12 AM on July 29 for set-up. It will also be open for set-up on Friday morning for one hour during early bird admission. The dealers’ room will be open to everyone beginning at 9 AM on Friday.

During Thursday set-up, dealers will be asked to arrange their displays and, upon completion, cover them up and then depart the room. No selling will be permitted during Thursday evening’s set-up.

The general membership is also welcome to arrive on Thursday. Early registration will take place beginning at 7 PM at a location to be determined. All members, dealers included, will be able to pick up their registration packets at this time. For those of you who have not yet registered for PulpFest, Thursday evening will be an ideal time to do so. Three-day memberships will be available for $35. Early-bird memberships will be available for $60. Early-bird memberships will not be available after Thursday.

For those members arriving on Thursday, July 29, refreshments will be provided courtesy of the PulpFest organizing committee. Film historian Ed Hulse has also put together a short film program to help celebrate the convention’s themes–the 90th anniversaries of the debut of Black Mask Magazine and the first appearance of Max Brand in Western Story Magazine.

Single-day memberships will be available at the door for Friday or Saturday at the rate of $15 per day. Sunday only memberships will cost $5. Full three-day memberships will also be available at the door for $35. Children who are accompanied by a parent and are fifteen years of age or younger will be admitted free of charge.

The hotel’s special room rate of $79 per night plus tax will continue through the start of the convention. However, rooms are going quickly. If you want to take advantage of this or other offers by the hotel, be sure to make your reservation as soon as possible. For further details, visit the Ramada Plaza page under "The Details." You can also make a reservation by calling the hotel at 614-846-0300. Be sure to mention PulpFest to get the special convention rate whether placing your reservation by phone or online.

The Ramada Plaza Hotel and Convention Center is located just off Exit 116 of I-71, about ten minutes north of downtown Columbus, Ohio. Heading north on I-71, get off at Exit 116, the Morse Road exit. Turn left onto Morse Road. Follow Morse until you get to Sinclair Road. Turn right onto Sinclair Road. The hotel is at 4900 Sinclair Road. Heading south on I-71, get off at Exit 116, the Sinclair Road exit. Turn right onto Sinclair Road and follow to the Ramada Plaza Hotel. For those who would like a map to get to the hotel, click here.

The PulpFest organizing committee is looking for volunteers to serve as hospitality suite hosts on Friday and Saturday evenings. If you are willing, please write to jack@pulpfest.com. Haffner Press will be sponsoring the con suite on Friday  when it will be temporarily renamed "The Otherness Suite." The Robert E. Howard Foundation will sponsor the con suite on Saturday.

The convention will officially open on Friday, July 30 at 9 AM. Early-bird registrants will be allowed into the dealers’ room beginning at 8 AM. The doors will open to everyone, beginning at 9 AM. The dealers’ room will be open until 5 PM on Friday evening. It will be open from 9 AM to 5 PM on Saturday and from 10 AM to 3 PM on Sunday.

There will be a full schedule of programming on Friday and Saturday evenings from 7 PM until about midnight. There will also be several presentations during the daytime hours. Please visit our programming page for further details.

All PulpFest attendees will be able to submit material for inclusion in the Saturday Night Auction. For additional information, please visit our Auctions page or contact Barry Traylor via email.

The second annual Munsey Breakfast will take place on Sunday, August 1, beginning at 9 AM. This will be an informal meal in the hotel’s restaurant to celebrate this year’s Munsey Award winner and your PulpFest experience. All convention attendees are welcome to attend.

PulpFest 2010 will have many freebies available for all attendees. There will be a variety of materials at the entrance to the dealers’ room. These will be accessible on Saturday morning. So bring along a BIG bag!

For those attendees who would like to ship their purchases to their homes, PulpFest 2010 has arranged for a local UPS provider to be available at the hotel on Sunday, August 1. A local FedEx office, located about two miles from the hotel, will also be open for shipping your purchases. Transportation can be arranged through the hotel’s shuttle service. Further information is available on our FAQ  page.

The entire PulpFest 2010 organizing committee–Mike Chomko, Jack Cullers, Ed Hulse and Barry Traylor–is looking forward to seeing you all in just a few days. Have a safe trip to Columbus.

As of June 16, the PulpFest dealers’ room is totally sold out. Any dealer registrations received after Tuesday, June 22, 2010 will be placed on a waiting list in case of last minute cancellations.

Visitors to this year’s show can look forward to seeing material for sale on 100 tables spread across our expanded exhibit space at the Ramada Plaza. PulpFest’s exhibitors offer a wide variety of product. In addition to original pulp magazines, attendees can purchase hardcovers and paperbacks, new fiction written in the pulp tradition, and other collectibles related to American popular culture of the pulp era. Rare and particularly desirable books can cost many hundreds, even thousands of dollars, but our dealers offer many inexpensive items as well. Collectors on a tight budget can still find lots of appealing stuff at PulpFest, and newcomers to the hobby will be surprised to see how many vintage magazines they can purchase at affordable prices. Those looking to sample pulp fiction without investing a lot of money in collectible items can choose from among dozens of newly published reprint volumes in trade-paperback format. In short, PulpFest’s dealers’ room offers something for everybody!

 PulpFest is proud to announce that award-winning author, editor, screenwriter, and biographer William F. Nolan will be the Guest of Honor at this year’s convention.

Among his other accomplishments, Mr. Nolan is a leading authority on pulp fictioneers Max Brand and Dashiell Hammett as well as the other Black Mask contributors who flourished under the regime of editor Joseph T. Shaw. His many books on these writers include Hammett: A Life at the Edge (1983), The Black Mask Boys (1985), and Max Brand: Western Giant (1986). This year marks the 90th anniversary of both Black Mask’s first issue and Max Brand’s first appearance in Western Story Magazine, and the PulpFest committee felt that Mr. Nolan was the ideal person to help recognize these milestones in pulp history. He will headline PulpFest panels on Western and hard-boiled detective fiction.     (more…)