My husband Art Taylor and I have been bringing our son to literary events since he was a baby. Last week, I had the pleasure of writing about this for Publisher’s Weekly. It’s not always gone smoothly, and it hasn’t always been pleasant, but we are pretty excited that Dash thinks that book launches are regular weekend events to attend. Here’s an excerpt from the essay:
When I was a kid, I remember how endless Sunday Mass used to feel, listening to the priest talk about things I didn’t understand. I had to sit still and be quiet. And yet I was aware that there was something important going on, something special and significant, and it was nice to be part of that.
I don’t equate readings with church (although good ones can be a spiritual experience in their own right), but my husband and I see Dashiell picking up on the specialness of the events we take him to. During one reading, a woman recited a long poem while Dash parked his cars in the back of the room. But when she started firing off a list of names in a rapid succession, he looked up and started laughing at the rhythm of the words. Another time we were at a friend’s reading, sitting in the children’s section flipping through picture books, when he looked up at me and whispered, “She just said ‘son of a gun’! That’s not a nice thing to say.”
You can read the rest of the essay here.
And, to put my money where my mouth is, Dash traveled with us this weekend to Pennsylvania where I had my Bystanders hometown launch at the Osterhout Free Library in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Dash sat in the front row and handed out Bystanders bookmarks to everyone in attendance (and photo-bombed some of the pictures, as you can see.) It was a really lovely event at a beautiful library, and I was so pleased to be able to read at a place I loved to go as a child myself. Circle of life?
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This weekend I get to fulfill a dream I’ve had since I started graduate school at George Mason University in 2002. I’ll be reading at one of my very favorite bookstores in the world–Politics and Prose. I remember seeing some very fabulous writers read there over the years–Alan Cheuse, Susan Shreve, Paul Auster and Richard Russo, to name a few. It’s truly an honor to get to stand at the podium myself!
I’ll be there on Saturday, June 25 from 1 to 2 p.m. with novelist and friend Michael Landweber, whose book Thursday, 1:17 p.m. was released on May 1, 2016. Please come join us if you’re in town!