The "pinch me" lineup

If you've ever seen me read in the last, oh, 7 years or so that I've been doing readings, you probably know that being onstage is not my natural habitat. While I love hosting In The Flesh, and am going to Miami next month to read at Lip Service (and finally visit Books & Books, and Miami, and K.), there is something about getting up in front of a crowd of people that never fails to unnerve me.

I'm getting much more into these teaching gigs, and am looking forward to the classes on erotica I'm teaching at Dark Odyssey: Winter Fire and Sex.2.0, because there isn't that everything is staring at me element. There's not a microphone. It's not so fraught.

I do readings both because I feel like it's bad writing karma to say no to them; in part, I got my book deal and some subsequent ones because one editor, who represents some of the best of the romance business, Lucia Macro, at Avon Red, saw me read at Galapagos once. Okay, that's not the only reason, but her encouragement made the small part of me that had big hopes and dreams convinced that I could actually write something longer than a short story (and now I'm editing an anthology for her too!). Anyway, my point is, that I think there are good reasons to do readings. I hope that in 7 years, I've improved somewhat. I can get into it, if I really love the story, especially if I've read it before. But really, I'd rather be behind my laptop, safely tucked away. Sure, you have to field inane emails sometimes, but that's fine, that I can handle. All this to say that seeing this lineup below gave me that "OMG, me, with all these big names?"

But you know what? Those six words I wrote for that book are probably more real and honest and true and pertinent than most of what I've written. Any time I get to write about babies, I'm happy. So please join us! For once, my heart won't be racing (hopefully) and this looks like an awesome lineup. Also, I have read the book, but want to reread it. I've hooked up with at least one contributor, and made out with another, though I have to double check it to see if there are any others. I'm so excited to see this book getting mega buzz, and it has a big (to me) print run (35,000, I believe I read), and I have a feeling it's gonna be all over.



Tuesday, March 11, 7:00 PM

Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs By Writers Famous And Obscure (Harper Perennial)

With editors Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith

And contributors Rachel Kramer Bussel, Nell Casey, David Rakoff, Amy Sohn, Anthony Swofford, and others

Legend has it that Hemingway once wrote a novel in six words—"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." In the 21st century, the six-word story has evolved into the six-word memoir, a form explored in myriad ways in the collection Not Quite What I Was Planning. The book began as a contest on www.SMITHmag.net, an online magazine about personal storytelling, and contains over 800 memoirs from regular folks from around the country and the world; as well as from celebrity contributors both literary and otherwise. The collection's editors and several of its contributors will show a video of the variety of memoirs collected, and read from their six-word memoirs this evening, and audience members will be invited to create their own version of this addicting literary form.