The BookExpo America Authors Reading Club

Two months ago, at BookExpo America, I conducted an interview with Pat Conroy and Patrick Hennessey touching upon the books they have coming out later this year: Conroy’s My Reading Life and Hennessey’s The Junior Officers Reading Club. I was delighted by the opportunity to take part in this conversation; over the course of fifty minutes, I heard some wonderful, inspiring stories from both authors—and being on hand as Conroy, who has been connecting with readers for four decades, dispensed some powerful advice to Hennessey on the eve of his American debut (his memoir is already out in the U.K.).

I hope you enjoy watching (or listening to) this interview as much as I enjoyed participating in it. And thank you to BookExpoCast.com for sharing this event, and many other events that took place at this year’s convention, with us.

18 July 2010 | interviews |

Read This: Marcus of Umbria

I met up with Justine van der Leun at a café just a few hours before she jumped a train to D.C. to do some interviews for her memoir, Marcus of Umbria—the story of how she threw caution to the wind and moved to Italy for a man she’d just met, and ended up falling in love with a dog. She’d been doing a lot of press recently, including some local news spots, although Marcus wasn’t always involved. “She would prefer not to,” van der Leun explained. (Oh, yes, Marcus is a female dog, said discovery not taking place until shortly after the first-impression name had been given.) “She’s very camera-shy, she would much rather stay at home.”

Since van der Leun didn’t just move to Italy for the guy—she also had a ghostwriting gig lined up—she didn’t go with a story in mind, certainly not a memoir. “I wish I had thought of it earlier,” she confessed. “I would have kept better notes and taken better photos.” She had a background as a magazine writer, but “when you write for magazines, you have to write for the voice of the magazine;” finding her own voice was much harder at first—and even before that, there was the proposal to write. “Proposals are an impossible thing to do… You have to be much better at selling… making a clear picture for the editor.”

I don’t know about the proposal, which I haven’t seen, but I’d say she’s done just fine at finding her voice; it’s a wonderful story about impulsively immersing yourself into a totally strange world, finding out that you’re in over your head, and latching on to a source of joy (and frustration) that comes out of nowhere. And whatever she says, the photos are pretty good, too.

13 July 2010 | interviews, read this |