Loving conversations and books
Loving conversations and books
I am on a beautiful roller coaster ride, happy to bring you along if you’re game. So much of this journey is about loving support from communities around the country, and from dear friends and family. Thank you!
Last week I traveled to Raleigh, where I had the immense pleasure of meeting for the first time my publishing team at Regal House—Jaynie Royal and Pam Van Dyk. These two dynamos invest in literary fiction and lift up new voices, for which I will be forever grateful.
We had an event at Raleigh’s lovely and inviting Quail Ridge Books with ballerina/author Gavin Larsen about her memoir, Being A Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life, and author Barbara Quick about her novel (also published by Regal House) What Disappears. Pam Van Dyk moderated our trio.
Gavin and I are doing a virtual event tonight at 6 PM Eastern at Malaprops Bookstore in Asheville. Please join us if you can.
My visit to Raleigh was also meaningful because I got to spend time with the sister-in-law and a dear friend of our beloved Virginia Rutledge who died in the autumn of 2020. I had hardly met these two women, and to visit with them was a great gift filled with tears and laughter.
I am pleased to share two interviews I wrote for Fjord Review: Meg Howrey about her upcoming novel They’re Going to Love You (about ballet, family estrangement, and loss, and it’s gorgeous), and Jennifer Homans’s truly monumental study of George Balanchine—Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century, which I cannot recommend highly enough.
Among many, a new experience in my Three Muses journey has been taping podcasts. These conversations offer new insights and have been interesting and challenging, as I hope they are for you (well, not the challenging part!). Here are a few: QWERTY with Marion Roach Smith, Write Now Podcast with Joy Clark, and The Book Marketing Action Podcast with Becky Robinson of Weaving Influence.
If you haven’t read it, I urge you to read The Trayvon Generation by poet and scholar Elizabeth Alexander. It’s a love letter to the Black boys and girls missing from violence, illustrated with exquisite art.
I also just finished Before All the World by Moriel Rothman-Zecher. It’s hard to describe this brilliant book, written in a comprehensible but completely new language of English/Yiddish, set in Philadelphia and Ukraine, simultaneously laugh-out-loud funny and deeply serious. Moriel and I will in conversation, in person, at Main Point Books in Wayne, PA (just outside of Philly), next Tuesday October 25. Hope you can come!
If you have time this Sunday, October 23 at 1 PM Eastern, I’ll be doing a virtual event with two other writers for Literary Modiin, in Israel. Please join us if you can.
My very best to you and yours, whatever roller coaster you’re traveling on.
Love, Martha