In my last newsletter, I described the literary adventures I had on my recent trip to Ireland. After that appeared, a couple of people forwarded to me an article by New York Times Book Critic Dwight Garner (the piece from the NYT also ran in the Irish Times) about his own visit to Dublin this summer. We visited many of the same places, took many of the same photos, and it was fun to revisit the adventure. I joked that it seemed to me that Garner had cribbed from my newsletter, or at least had borrowed the idea.
Since I’ve been home, I’ve been busy with domestic literary activities, and that’s the subject of today’s letter.
A week after returning from Ireland, I went up to the Washington, D.C. area for an engagement at The Writers Center in Bethesda, MD. When I lived in Washington, I took writing classes at TWC, my first real exposure to creative writing workshops. I’ve been happy over the years to do several readings in that space (including after they had awarded me an Emerging Writer Fellowship). It was great to have an opportunity to present The Last Bird of Paradise there, along with my friend David Ebenbach, who also has a new book out this year.
Two days later I was at Bluebird & Co., a cute little bookstore in Crozet, VA (Crozet being a lovely town just across the Blue Ridge Mountains from here, basically a bedroom community for Charlottesville). On this occasion, I was joined by Leona Sevick, who has a new poetry collection out from Trio House Press.
That weekend was the online Professional Development Weekend for the Queens University MFA program. I graduated 21 years ago, but I’ve continued to be involved, both for my own development and to help more recent graduates. I was on two panels, one on Historical Fiction with my friend Valerie Nieman, and one on the Path to Publication, moderated by my friend Bruce Overby. Before the pandemic, these weekends were held in person on the campus in Charlotte, but this event was on Zoom. I’m hopeful we can gather on campus again one day.
The next week, in addition to appearing on a couple of podcasts, I gave an “Author Talk” for the University of Virginia Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) in Charlottesville, VA. I discovered in talking about my new book over the last several months that people know very little about Singapore, so the talk includes a slide presentation about the history of the country in addition to my book. (I’m giving the same talk next month in Staunton, VA.)
The week after that I had the pleasure of meeting with a book club at a local library. The members had all read The Last Bird of Paradise and we had an engaging discussion about the book. The club members—about ten people—were also interested in hearing about my earlier work. I love meeting with book clubs, especially when all or most of the people have read the book and can ask salient questions.
The following week was very busy. On Tuesday night I attended a book launch event for the debut young adult novel by a friend. The presentation (which included a puppet show!) was very well attended. On Wednesday I was back up in the Washington D.C. area for the Fall for the Book Literary Festival at George Mason University where I was moderating a panel. The three books being presented by their authors on the panel were terrific reads and I think the discussion in front of 40 or so people went very well. Moderating a panel like that takes a lot of work to read the books and develop questions for the whole panel and some tailored to each author, but I consider it part of being a good literary citizen.
Then on Saturday was the inaugural Queen City Word Fest, an event organized by a local bookstore, The Book Dragon Bookshop. In the morning were panels at the Staunton Public Library and in the afternoon was an author “Meet & Greet” where about 30 local authors had an opportunity to chat with readers and sell their books. The store plans to expand it in the future, but this year’s festival went well, I thought.
This past Saturday was the inaugural Crozet Book Fest sponsored by Bluebird & Co. the store I mentioned above. I wasn’t on a panel, but I had friends who were, so I headed over to be supportive. Being supportive in this case meant buying books . . .
And finally, I’ve spent much of the past few weeks reading and attempting to understand the new novel by Haruki Murakami which will be released in mid-November. I occasionally accept review assignments from the Washington Independent Review of Books (and other publications) and I was eager to tackle this one. The novel, The City and its Uncertain Walls, is about a man who seems to have separated from his shadow, which now exists in a different reality.
I have a couple of events lined up for November, but I’m hopeful that I can now, at long last, get back to working on my new book!
