Reading to my daughters
I have so loved the book readings I’ve done so far–in Seattle, I was thrilled to see old friends and meet new ones, including artists like Kate Iredale and Megan Lane and David Robinson who contributed beautiful pieces of art for the book and including Patricia Ryan Madson, a woman I didn’t know until I boldly asked if she would review the book (her quote ended up on the back cover) who was there from California–a huge surprise! 
And many, many more wonderful surprises, including Life is a Verb selling out!
In South Bend, Indiana, the fantabulous Kathy Schuth, a 37days reader I had never met, invited me, put me up in a wonderful B&B, fed me homemade sweet potato soup on one of the rainiest days I’ve ever seen, and rented a beautiful art space for a reading filled with generous, extraordinary people, including two women who drove from Ohio to be there! 
If you don’t know your geography, as I didn’t, it took them five hours to drive there! Thanks to Jylene and Natacha for being there and enduring such a long drive!
And on this past Saturday night, I read at home, in Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina, to a standing-room-only crowd. I was so touched when a man I went to junior high and high school walked in the door, some 30 years after the fact… Everyone who came was a treasure and a gift, including two seniors I don’t know from Appalachian University who drove hours to get there to ask me a question, a friend from my alma mater, Guilford College, who made quite a trek to be in Asheville and stay at the Sweet Biscuit Inn where we plotted how we could kidnap Otto the Innkeeper’s dog, many neighbors and friends in community, three artists whose work is in the book–Julia Burr, Katie Green, and Nicole Minkin, two ebullient professors from a local university, two women all gussied up for the opening night of the Symphony who stopped by first to be there for me, two women who traveled hours and hours from Atlanta (the wife of a man I met on a plane trip recently from San Diego to Atlanta!), and so very many others that I knew and didn’t yet know. 
And I simply can’t express how wonderful it was to have–all these years later–two of my very favorite professors from Guilford College there along with their fantastic wives. Lee Johnson and Jerry Godard, two treasures who hold such a significant place in my heart.
But the most important part of the evening for me was having Emma and Tess and Mr Brilliant there for the reading of a book I wrote just for them. I started crying in the first two minutes of the talk at the very thought of it, setting off a ripple of eye wiping such as the world has never seen. Thank you for loving those girls.
Next on the book tour? A fantastic gathering in Madison, Wisconsin, at the nation’s oldest feminist bookstore (A Room of One’s Own, 6:30pm, Friday, October 3rd) because an amazing woman named Jodi asked me and because any bookstore that has a reading group called the Shameless Hussies is a place I need to visit. Then a reading in a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday, October 5th, followed by a reading at Amazon Bookstore Cooperative that evening in Minneapolis, both because a remarkable woman named Nancy asked me. Details are here. Come! Entertain me with your brilliant accents!
Wherever I go on this book tour, I am really reading to my daughters.
[First photo is of the bright shining moment when Life is a Verb became the #1 best seller at Malaprop’s. You’ll note that they just have a picture of the cover in the window because they sold out! Last photo is from Kerstin’s report on being at the Seattle reading!
]
