British author detained on way to BEA
02.06.09 Gayle Feldman reporting in The Bookseller

Sarwat Chadda, author of the young-adult novel The Devil's Kiss (Puffin UK/ Hyperion US), will have a hard time forgetting his trip to Book Expo America, the New York-based trade show. It should have been a first-time author's dream, but almost turned into a nightmare, when he was detained at Newark airport for "copious questioning," as his agent, Sarah Davies, told The Bookseller.

Chadda was the first author Davies took on when she left Macmillan UK children's publishing job to live near Washington, DC, and start her own agency, Greenhouse Literary, a year and a half ago. In March 08 she sold Devil's Kiss to Hyperion in a "big six figure deal." The novel was to be one of the featured books in the YA Buzz Panel, and Chadda himself would speak on one of the new "author stages" in the exhibition hall – a lucky break that many wish for and few receive.
However, flying in from Heathrow, Chadda - who was born in the UK of Pakistani parents and had spent a couple years travelling in Asia - was taken away by immigration officials, questioned, and as is the way of these things, not even permitted to make a phone call.
Hyperion had sent someone to meet him, and "they thought that he had missed the plane," Davies said. After an unnerving hour or so, he was released and sent on his way. It was a distressing but all too common sign of the times we live in.
On Friday afternoon, Chadda's editor pushed his novel at the panel. On Saturday, he got on to the downtown author stage at the Javits Center and did his thing. It's to be hoped that the receptive and welcoming faces of BEA, and not those of Newark airport, leave the stronger impression.