Pearl Abraham @ Festival of the Book

(Pearl Abraham is sending emails from the Virginia Festival of the Book. I so wish I was down there this weekend; maybe next year, since I'll actually be a published author then... Here's her first report--oh, and before I forget, Pearl will also be doing an Author2Author dialogue with Naama Goldstein the week of March 28th-April 1st; look for it!)

Weeks (or was it months) before the festival, emails from panel moderators, travel agents and subagents, all working hard to make certain everyone knew where and when they were going or ought to be going, filled the inboxes of all participants. Some gems culled from these emails:

Rules and Regulations: IMPORTANT:

• Be sure to PRACTICE and TIME your reading beforehand. If you go longer than 5 minutes, I will start making horrible coughing sounds.
  
• Also practice PROJECTING your voice, in case there are inadequate microphones.
  
• Ladies: Wear pants or skirt that look good when you're sitting down, as we'll be on chairs directly facing the audience (i.e., no "modesty panel").
  

After which Steve Stern (The Angel of Forgetfulness) advised the anti-Sharon-Stone look, pants, skirt, and afghan over it. Indeed, Vyvyane Loh arrived to one of my panels (Found in Translation) looking hot in a pink mini-skirt, and carrying a matching afghan for legs.

Earlier that day, I arrived at La Guardia with plenty of time to spare. First stop: the screen listing the departures, where I learned that the USAir flight into Charlottesville would be leaving half an hour late. With only a twang of anxiety (it was only half an hour), I recalled that USAir just about went out of business this past fall, but the festival organization determined to reserve all the author flights anyway, thereby keeping USAir in business. I checked in and went to have a slow breakfast, with the newspaper and my cellphone, not vastly different than regular mornings, except that on my daily schedule, the news doesn’t figure until late afternoon. I read until I realized that it was 9:45, time to board, then hurried to the gate where I was informed that the gate had been reassigned a while ago and that the plane was in any case delayed in Charlottesville, due to a maintenance issue. At the reassigned gate, I met author A. J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All),who was also wondering whether he would make it to his panel on time. As it turned out, his co-panelist, Sara Nelson (So Many Books, So Little Time, and the head of PW) was also booked on the flight, therefore the panel scheduled for 2:00 couldn’t start without him.

The toy tractor engine with maintenance issues lifting us into the air was not reassuring, although we were, as A.J. Jacobs put it, “probably the most literary flight in the air.” Would a goodly portion of Western literature be reduced to a skid mark over the NorthEast coast? After a rough start, and an equally rrough landing (our stomachs needed plenty of settling), we emerged into sunny, 60-degree Charlottesville, and that made all the difference...

photo: Marilynn K. Yee/NYT