In the Company of Writers

I have had the privilege over the past few weeks of hanging out with some very cool writers. Joannie Stangeland for one, Katie Tynan (of It’s About Time) for another. Last week I was one of the featured readers for Rose Alley Press‘s 20th Anniversary reading series, and I want to take a moment to recommend this local press, owned and operated by David D. Horowitz, and its books (particularly as it is getting to be that gift-giving time of year).

The novelist Jane Hamilton tells a story about getting caught reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch in a school hallway while waiting for a child. The other mother who spied her said something that Jane translated to “How Quaint.” With an edge of outrage in her voice, she added, “as if I were tatting lace!”

I thought of that story because I read Middlemarch, the first time, while taking a class with Professor William Dunlop, whose poetry book, Caruso for the Children and Other Poems, is a Rose Alley Press book.

One reason to go to readings is to connect with like-minded people who read the same sort of books that I do. That you do. Don’t you?