Month: October 2005

Reading Recap: Ballard High School

Audience: About 120.
Anxiety index: 8 (out of 10).
Books given away: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, by Sherman Alexie and Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi.

I was invited to speak to an auditorium full of 9th, 10th and 11th graders at Ballard High School yesterday. This was part of the Writers in the Schools program run by Seattle Arts and Lectures. I’ve spoken in front of large audiences before, but this was the toughest crowd yet!

I talked about being a teenager myself, the kind of books I liked to read, what kind of writing I did back then. I read from “The Storyteller” and talked about how that piece was very personal for me, because it mirrored my own journey to writing. Afterwards, we had a Q&A, which was very enjoyable. Kids at that age have an incredible ability to ask very astute questions, the kind that many adults wouldn’t think of asking. Unfortunately, we started a bit late and ran out of time during that last part, so I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would have liked to interacting with the kids.




Reading Recap: Third Place Books

Audience: About 10.
Anxiety index: 4 (out of 10).
Surprise guest(s): A Moroccan-American reader who’d heard about Hope from a bookseller. And my friend Donna M., whom I met while a resident at Hedgebrook.
No. of Moroccans who said hello:1

One of the great things about Third Place Books is how it works with the local community. It’s one of those places where you see people dropping by on their way home from work, to have a cup of coffee and hang out, play chess, all the while checking out books. The reading took place in The Den, a quieter area in the store, and there were about 10 people, so it was pretty cozy. This time, I read from ‘The Fanatic,’ which I haven’t looked at since the piece was in manuscript form, so it was nice revisiting the characters of Noura, Faten, Larbi, and Salma.

After the reading, I was asked to sit down for snapshots at a photo booth. Usually, bookstores have you sign an autograph book, but Third Place keeps an album of black-and-white photos, with corresponding names and dates. It was fun to flip through it and see people like Michael Moore making faces at the camera.




Almond/Sarvas Smackdown

By now, you’ve probably seen writer Steve Almond’s takedown at Salon of fellow writer and blogger Mark Sarvas (of the Elegant Variation.) Regular readers of this blog know that Mark and I are good friends, and I won’t pretend that I will offer an unbiased opinion about this admittedly funny, if more than a little puerile, piece.

It’s clear to me, though, that anyone who’s spent any kind of time at TEV knows that it’s a good place for book lovers to read intelligent interviews, book reviews, commentary, and so on. Contrary to Almond’s allegations, very little space has ever been devoted to Sarvas’s opinions about his writing (to which, I might add, Sarvas is entitled).

In any case, I think it’s a losing game for writers to complain about what a particular blogger has to say about them. Bloggers offer opinions. If you don’t like those opinions, start a blog of your own and let others hear you.



New Loggernaut

Portland readers should check out the latest Loggernaut reading. One of the coolest reading series in pdx. Here are the details:

Thursday, October 13, at 7:30 PM, @ Gravy in Portland (3957 N. Mississippi). Admission is two bucks.

Rick Barot, Matt Love, and Vinnie Wilhelm will respond to the prompt, “Too late?”



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