Book release party success

I’ve finally recovered from the Pretty Peg book launch enough to brag on the internet about it!

Karen Bjorneby, our deeply gracious and madly enthusiastic host and fine Writing Salon instructor whose class you should go sign up for right now, read from her new novel (so very new I’m not even sure of the title). Jenny McKeel read an excerpt from her award-winning essay “Saigon,” Robin Silverman read from HER award-winning novel Lemon Reef, Matthew Lavin had his debut as a reading writer with an excerpt from his book The Red Hands, and David West read some of my favorite of his poems and one of my favorite Eli Coppola poems. All amazing to be there for, but I was pretty moved to have my friend Eli be invoked at my own book launch, since while she was alive I was just a tiny writer baby who could barely step up to the open mic at one of her features.

I have since learned you have to just about lick one of those Shure 58s to be heard through the PA:

Here’s 3/4 of my writing group (Linda Cleary, our 4th hand, took the picture and ran the merch table) setting up the pizza. And being blessed from above by the patron saint of El Rio.