BookTour.com

I definitely like the idea of BookTour.com, which is that you sign up for an account and it will tell you when an author is doing an event nearby, or you can search to find out what's happening in, say, D.C. if you're going to there next week.

Also it looks great for authors (I tried to sign up as an author but you have to have a book with an ISBN for that) because it has the potential to hook them up with book clubs, readers, etc., and in general seems like a useful tool for promoting your books. As I say, seems like a great thing in theory -- I hope it works well in practice.

Go to BookTour.com and set up an account!

Upper Valley Writers' Show--May 21

The Upper Valley Writers’ Show will be held at 7 PM Monday, May 21, 2007 in the Beverley Street Galleries, 22 West Beverley Street, Staunton.

Program:

Nathan Moore: Original Songs
Doc Chapman: Stories
Den Frumen: Two Short Plays
Raymond Robertson: Tales from a Commonwealth Attorney

There will also be an Open Mike, and refreshments. A small contribution is requested. For more information: frankalb@verizon.net

Readings: David Wojahn

I had the pleasure this afternoon of attending a reading by David Wojahn at Washington and Lee University. It was announced only last week that Wojahn was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his Interrogation Palace, which he kindly signed for me today. The reading was not as well-attended as I had expected, but the room wasn’t empty either—all the people there I recognized were either W&L English Department faculty or spouses of faculty.

Wojahn is known for tightly structured, if not formalistic, poems, with powerful images. One that he read (not in the collection, but from a separate souvenir broadside that was issued for the reading) is “August 1953”—here’s an excerpt:

“A nurse gathers up the afterbirth. My mother
had been screaming but now could sleep.
by this time I am gone—also gathered up
& wheeled out. Above my jaundiced face the nurses hover.”

I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of poems out there about afterbirth. I’m looking forward to diving into the collection.

More Literary Events

James River Writers maintains a nice calendar of literary events in the Richmond, Virginia area.

Readings

It was my intention to keep a calendar here of upcoming readings in the area, but I let that slip away from me. Now, though, I've added a "Literary Virginia [Western]" section to the sidebar, which I hope will remind me to kepp it current. Right now I've got items from University of Virginia, Sweet Briar College, Washington & Lee and right here in Staunton. I'd like to add, as I become aware of them, events at Mary Baldwin College, James Madison University, Eastern Mennonite University and Bridgewater College. So if you know of a reading event in my area, please let me know!

Upcoming:
3/29/07 Paul Muldoon (UVa Bookstore)
3/31/07 Ralph Cohen (signing) (Staunton-Bookstack)
4/3/07 Elton Glaser (UVa Bookstore)
4/13/07 Christopher Buckley (WLU)
4/16/07 Upper Valley Writers Show (Staunton-BSSS)
4/18/07 Carrie Brown (SBC)
4/19/07 Tom Beller (UVa Bookstore)
4/30/07 David Wojahn (WLU)

VaBook.org: Communities of Memory/Disasters in Fact and Fiction

I made it to two Virginia Festival of the Book programs today (plus a little time for coffee drinking and reading at the Mudhouse). Both were really well done.

I knew the first (Communities of Memory: The Holocaust and Beyond) would be packed, not only because of the topic but because one of the presenters, Daniel Mendelsohn, just won the National Book Critics Circle award for his book, The Lost. So, I got there early and still had to sit in the back row, in the corner, and soon the stairs were lined as well. Mendelsohn spoke first and read the opening pages of his book, which explains how he came to be compelled by the search for six relatives who were killed by the Nazis. What he read was much more lyrical than I was expecting and even funny, and then he went on to discuss the process of interviewing people who had known his relatives. It sounds like an excellent book.

Next was Yaacob Dweck, the translator into English of Haim Sabato’s The Dawning of the Day. Dweck also read a beautiful section on the subject of memory.

Last in this program was Robert Satloff, author of Among the Righteous, in which he describes his search for Arabs who saved Jews in the Middle East during World War II, a fascinating topic with some obvious modern lessons. During his talk Satloff mentioned that his wife, who works for the World Bank, had been posted to Morocco and that it coincided with the time he was doing research for the book. Afterward I learned who his wife is--someone I had worked with on Vietnam when I was at the Bank!

Then it was off through Charlottesville’s horribly congested Main Street to the Barnes & Noble for the next program, Disasters in Fact and Fiction. I wasn’t particularly interested, frankly, but it was on the way home and I wanted to stop into B&N to pick up something else. I was glad I stayed. The first reader was Stefan Bechtel, whose book Roar of the Heavens is about Hurricane Camille. That storm had a huge impact in these parts and people still talk about it, so I think it will be an interesting read. Next was Elise Blackwell, whose novel Unnatural History of Cypress Parish is about the 1927 floods that devastated New Orleans. Ken Foster talked about his book, The Dogs Who Found Me, which isn’t a disaster book per se but begins with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and ends with Hurricane Katrina. And the final presenter was Katharine Weber, whose novel Triangle is based on a 1911 garment factory fire in New York. An excellent program with four thoughtful presenters.

VaBook.org: Lives Turned Upside Down

I only managed to get to one event at the Virginia Festival of the Book today but it was a good one. The theme was “Lives Turned Upside Down: Fiction” although it seems to me that theme could include a lot of books, if not most.

I think I would have gone to this event anyway, but the main reason I was there was because my friend Liam Callanan was one of the four authors reading. If there had been an applause/laughter meter, Liam would have won some kind of award as he was charming, funny, disarming, etc., and the packed balcony of the New Dominion Bookshop loved him. They loved the others also, but maybe not quite as much.

Liam read from All Saints, his second novel. One interesting aspect of the novel is that it is in the voice of a 50-something woman who teaches at a Catholic High School and it is fascinating to wonder how Liam captured her voice. Unexpectedly, she meets a man, which is what the book is mostly about. But the part Liam read to us was about her becoming a little too fond of one of her students. Very intriguing, and a terrific reading.

Melissa Clark read from her novel Swimming Upstream Slowly. The section she read was excellent and funny and poignant and it got me to thinking about the process of writing. Hers is based on a wild premise that is at once both crazy and, to the uninformed, plausible, and it's going to get a large audience for that alone. And it sounds like she’s done a good job with the execution, too, so I think she’s got a winner.

Katherine Davis read from her first novel, Capturing Paris. In her reading I found the language to be the most compelling. And I enjoyed her discussion in the Q&A that followed of how she turned to writing after a long teaching career.

Heidi Boehringer read from Chasing Jordan which sounds like it could be an emotional roller coaster. It’s about a woman whose little boy is killed by a passing car, so the tragedy is always present, but the section she read also had humor that made the tragedy bearable.

A good event and I'm looking forward to my next trip across the mountain on Friday.

Upper Valley Writers Show

I haven't been good about attending the Upper Valley Writers Show, held once a month at the Beverley Street Studio School in Staunton, but because my friend Logan Ward was reading tonight I made a point of being there.

The program began with Barbara Martin singing three songs from her new CD, which I will definitely be getting. She's an excellent singer-songwriter and she was playing her new Huss & Dalton guitar, made right here in Staunton.

After Barbara, Ted Grudzinski read a series of poems he's done about classical composers. And then it was Logan's turn. I've heard Logan read before from his book, See You in a Hundred Years, which comes out in June this year, but tonight he read a new essay about walking through urban sprawl, the germ of a new book. It was a terrific essay and held the crowd's attention. I can definitely see it as a book.

Then Frank Albrecht read some new poems and older poems to close out the first half of the program and, unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay for the open mic segment.

Virginia Festival of the Book

It's coming! This year's Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville is March 21-25 and, as usual, there's quite a schedule. Here is a partial list, taken from the Festival's website, although looking at the actual schedule I saw many other names I recognized:

Among the participating authors are novelists Lee Smith (On Agate Hill), Howard Norman (Devotion), Luis Alberto Urrea (The Hummingbird’s Daughter), Mark Childress (One Mississippi), Donald McCaig (Canaan), Caroline Preston (Gatsby’s Girl), Mameve Medwed (How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life), Louis Bayard (The Pale Blue Eye), Ravi Howard (Like Trees, Walking), Laura Dave (London is the Best City in America) and short story writers David Lynn (Year of Fire), R.T. Smith (Uke Rivers Delivers), and Steve Watkins (My Chaos Theory).

Nonfiction authors include war letters editor Andrew Carroll (Grace Under Fire, Operation Homecoming), Jamestown archaeologist William M. Kelso (Jamestown, The Buried Truth), journalist Charles Bowden (Inferno), astronaut Tom Jones (Skywalking), reading advocate Jim Trelease (The Read Aloud Handbook), and anorexia memoirist Aimee Liu (Gaining). A special panel on “graphic nonfiction” will include comics editor Sid Jacobson and illustrator Ernie Colón (creators of The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation) and graphic biographer Andy Helfer (Ronald Reagan, Malcolm X).

Thriller and mystery authors appearing during the Friday, March 23-Saturday, March 24 Crime Wave schedule of programming include Lee Child (The Hard Way), Tess Gerritsen (The Mephisto Club), Laura Lippman (What the Dead Know), and George Pelecanos (The Night Gardener).

The poetry program will feature readings from Rei Berroa (Book of Fragments), Michael Chitwood (From Whence), Stephen Cushman (Heart Island), Gary Geddes (Flying Blind), Kimiko Hahn (The Narrow Road to the Interior), Judith Hall (Three Trios), Michael McFee (Shinemaster), Bino Realuyo (The Gods We Worship Live Next Door), David Wojahn (Interrogation Palace), and a reading from the Best New Poets series.

Lee Smith, Hal Crowther (Gather at the River), and Earl Hamner (Generous Women) will host the annual Authors Reception at Carr’s Hill, the UVa President’s home. Tickets are open to the public ($25) and are available online.

EMU's Writers Read Series

A commenter on the previous post informs me of the Writers Read series at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg. Although I confess that I'm not familiar with the visiting writers who are coming, I hope I can make it up there for some of the readings!

Paying Attention

It would appear from this picture that I was listening very closely. I'm the one on the far right, at this reading at Staunton's Bookstack.

Readings (a work in progress)

I enjoy a good author reading. Occasionally. When you go to about 50 of them in a week, as I did during both Sewanee and Bread Loaf, they can get a little tedious. But one a week or so wouldn’t be bad, if the authors are interesting. Some people don’t care for readings, possibly on the theory that the work on the page should speak for itself, but I enjoy hearing the work in the author’s voice and I also enjoy opportunities to meet other writers. The problem is that here in Staunton, there aren’t that many readings of note. And yet within 40 minutes of here we have Harrisonburg (Eastern Mennonite University and James Madison University), Bridgewater (Bridgewater College), Lexington (Washington & Lee University and Virginia Military Institute) and Charlottesville (University of Virginia). All of these schools and bookstores in these cities host readings. And I’ve even traveled as far as Roanoke for a reading, so why not readings at Sweetbriar in Amherst? One problem of course is hearing about all these events. As far as I know, there is no single resource for literary readings open to the public in this area. So I’ve resolved to keep a master calendar of readings in the area and maybe that will encourage me to get to more of them than I have in the past, and also will be something that others nearby might consult. I will be adding to this calendar as I become aware of more events and eventually I will format it for the sidebar at right.

September
9/15/06 Matt Warner, Bookstack (Staunton) 7pm
9/18/06 Upper Valley Writers' Show, Beverley Street Studio School (Staunton) 7pm

October
10/16/06 Upper Valley Writers' Show, Beverley Street Studio School (Staunton) 7pm
10/19/06 Brett Anthony Johnston, WLU (Lexington) 4:30pm
10/26/06 Marie Howe, SBC (Amherst) 8pm

November
11/7/06 Jamie O’Neill, WLU (Lexington) 7:30pm
11/15/06 Peter Manseau, SBC (Amherst) 8pm
11/20/06 Upper Valley Writers' Show, Beverley Street Studio School (Staunton) 7pm