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.