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Twin Cities Book Festival writeup
Oct. 14th, 2012 03:59 pmI persuaded my friend Jody to accompany me to the kickoff soiree on Friday night, held at Consortium Book Distribution. We chatted with each other, a Rain Taxi Board member, a recent East Coast transplant and the moderator of my Saturday panel, Stephen(ie) Burt. The turnout was smaller than I remember from the last time I went but the company was good and the munchies was excellent. Afterwards, Jody and I retired to the Wilde Roast Cafe to chat about fandom, books and families.
Saturday, I turned up at 10 AM at the Fairgrounds, in time to meet up with author Rachel Gold. We ran about for a bit, dropping off stuff, talking to various people, joining up with my friend Matt and consuming hot dogs and fries, pre-panel. The Progress Center was, as I feared, cold, damp and horribly noisy and echoy, so we recognized that the panel would be a challenge. Our panel convened at 11:30, panel topic being Queer Minnesota: The State LGBT Writing, panelists: Raymond Luczak, Rachel Gold, John Medeiros and me, moderator: Stephen(ie) Burt (spelling meant to honor Stephen's genderqueer identity; he teaches as Stephen at Harvard and writes as Stephen elsewhere). Ray is an amazing deaf poet and essayist and he chose to sign his responses to questions while his interpreter sat in the audience and translated for the rest of us. I've never seen this done before but thought it worked quite well and was very interesting to watch. The panel went well overall; we answered questions about place, about queer writing, about queer writing in the Twin Cities. Stephen(ie) read several excerpts from various poets, including Ray. The audience seemed engaged, if prone to huddle together for warmth.
From there, Rachel and I went to the Magers and Quinn table to sign books and Ray and John went to their respective publisher's tables, Squares and Rebels and North Star Press. Magers and Quinn ordered in Silver Moon, A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace and Other Stories and Hellebore and Rue, which was lovely of them and means that they are now available locally somewhere in addition to the fabulous Uncle Hugo's. I signed 5 copies of Moon and one copy of A Day at the inn while we were there, and consequently had a great time (few things are as painful as being an author at a signing table with nothing to sign). We also met author Lorna Landvik, who was delightful, and several friends old and new.
After our signing window, I met up with Matt, editor Sarah Olson from Apex Books and author David Schwartz to go hear Ann and Jeff VanderMeer talk about their new project, The Weird. This was quite entertaining and interesting, and I now own a lovely doorstop-sized copy of the book, which includes one of my favorite short stories, "Axolotl" by Julio Cortazar. I've only read it in Spanish so I'm very curious to see how the new translation holds up for me. Apart from that, it was fun to meet them outside Facebook (apparently, I make myself memorable on Facebook :-). After that, we made a brief foray around the room, chatting with people and buying a few things (I picked up 2 books of poetry, one by Stephen(ie) and one by Ray and a copy of Mizna in addition to The Weird). Then it was off to go hear Kate Bornstein. Rachel encouraged us all to sit in the front row which meant we got full feedback when the sound system went awry, but also meant that we could exchange quips with Kate when she paused in her reading. She focused on her new bio, A Queer and Pleasant Danger, though I did ask her about her cyberpunk novel, Nearly Roadkill, co-written with Caitlin Sullivan. She's currently working on a YA novel with a trans protagonist, which sounded pretty cool. And Rachel got to give her one of her Being Emily t-shirts after the reading, which was lovely to witness.
After Kate's moving presentation, we had a few more conversations with various folks before going our separate ways. I'm still not feeling a hundred percent, so it was an evening of sorting through mail and balancing checkbooks while snuggling kitties for me. This morning, I got to polish off a very nice weekend by having brunch with National Book Award Finalist (I love saying that!) Will Alexander and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer at the Citizen. We had a free-floating conversation about lit in translation, sundry projects, traveling, the Weird and unusual convention experiences. Hands down, one of the best writerly meals I had all year, and I've been fortunate enough to have had a bunch of them this year. The VanderMeers were kind enough to give me an advance reading copy of Karin Tidbeck's new collection Jagannath, which I'm looking forward to. The buzz is impressive. A splendid weekend and a fine ending to my appearance schedule for 2012. Now to concentrate on getting some writing done.
Saturday, I turned up at 10 AM at the Fairgrounds, in time to meet up with author Rachel Gold. We ran about for a bit, dropping off stuff, talking to various people, joining up with my friend Matt and consuming hot dogs and fries, pre-panel. The Progress Center was, as I feared, cold, damp and horribly noisy and echoy, so we recognized that the panel would be a challenge. Our panel convened at 11:30, panel topic being Queer Minnesota: The State LGBT Writing, panelists: Raymond Luczak, Rachel Gold, John Medeiros and me, moderator: Stephen(ie) Burt (spelling meant to honor Stephen's genderqueer identity; he teaches as Stephen at Harvard and writes as Stephen elsewhere). Ray is an amazing deaf poet and essayist and he chose to sign his responses to questions while his interpreter sat in the audience and translated for the rest of us. I've never seen this done before but thought it worked quite well and was very interesting to watch. The panel went well overall; we answered questions about place, about queer writing, about queer writing in the Twin Cities. Stephen(ie) read several excerpts from various poets, including Ray. The audience seemed engaged, if prone to huddle together for warmth.
From there, Rachel and I went to the Magers and Quinn table to sign books and Ray and John went to their respective publisher's tables, Squares and Rebels and North Star Press. Magers and Quinn ordered in Silver Moon, A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace and Other Stories and Hellebore and Rue, which was lovely of them and means that they are now available locally somewhere in addition to the fabulous Uncle Hugo's. I signed 5 copies of Moon and one copy of A Day at the inn while we were there, and consequently had a great time (few things are as painful as being an author at a signing table with nothing to sign). We also met author Lorna Landvik, who was delightful, and several friends old and new.
After our signing window, I met up with Matt, editor Sarah Olson from Apex Books and author David Schwartz to go hear Ann and Jeff VanderMeer talk about their new project, The Weird. This was quite entertaining and interesting, and I now own a lovely doorstop-sized copy of the book, which includes one of my favorite short stories, "Axolotl" by Julio Cortazar. I've only read it in Spanish so I'm very curious to see how the new translation holds up for me. Apart from that, it was fun to meet them outside Facebook (apparently, I make myself memorable on Facebook :-). After that, we made a brief foray around the room, chatting with people and buying a few things (I picked up 2 books of poetry, one by Stephen(ie) and one by Ray and a copy of Mizna in addition to The Weird). Then it was off to go hear Kate Bornstein. Rachel encouraged us all to sit in the front row which meant we got full feedback when the sound system went awry, but also meant that we could exchange quips with Kate when she paused in her reading. She focused on her new bio, A Queer and Pleasant Danger, though I did ask her about her cyberpunk novel, Nearly Roadkill, co-written with Caitlin Sullivan. She's currently working on a YA novel with a trans protagonist, which sounded pretty cool. And Rachel got to give her one of her Being Emily t-shirts after the reading, which was lovely to witness.
After Kate's moving presentation, we had a few more conversations with various folks before going our separate ways. I'm still not feeling a hundred percent, so it was an evening of sorting through mail and balancing checkbooks while snuggling kitties for me. This morning, I got to polish off a very nice weekend by having brunch with National Book Award Finalist (I love saying that!) Will Alexander and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer at the Citizen. We had a free-floating conversation about lit in translation, sundry projects, traveling, the Weird and unusual convention experiences. Hands down, one of the best writerly meals I had all year, and I've been fortunate enough to have had a bunch of them this year. The VanderMeers were kind enough to give me an advance reading copy of Karin Tidbeck's new collection Jagannath, which I'm looking forward to. The buzz is impressive. A splendid weekend and a fine ending to my appearance schedule for 2012. Now to concentrate on getting some writing done.
