Kim Sun&#233e Gets Her Dream Blurb

I first met Kim Sunée last year at the Pulpwood Queens book festival, where her memoir, Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home, was a big hit with the book club members of East Texas. She’s made a lot of other fans along the way—and in this essay, she tells how she found one of her first, at a crucial moment in the book’s path to publication.

I had turned in the final draft of my manuscript and was about to board a plane to Paris when my editor called informing me that the next step before my book could be published was acquiring blurbs. I felt sick to my stomach. Blurbs. I had heard from other first-time authors about how a line or two of praise from a famous author could make or break how a bookseller perceives you or if a reviewer will even take a second look at your advance copy among the hundreds she receives each week.

Most of my Paris trip was spent retesting recipes for the book by day and tossing at night trying to figure out who to ask and how to approach them. I didn’t know anyone famous enough to help me as a first-time author. My French writer friends didn’t understand the emphasis placed on a quote from another writer. “Doesn’t the book speak for itself?” they would ask while pouring me another glass of wine. How could I explain that in Amérique, we were obsessed with what others thought and that an advance copy without substantial blurbs was the sign of a book with a very short shelf life? I left Paris convinced that no one would blurb me.

A few days later, I went to Key West on assignment and, over drinks with the French chef, discovered that he had spent time in Michigan and Wisconsin. Jim Harrison’s name came up. I read Jim Harrison’s work, mainly his poetry, as a 15 year-old writing student in New Orleans. After ten years living and eating in France, and now that I was a food editor, I had come to also love Harrison’s The Raw and The Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand. It is one of those books I carry with me and give to people I hope will become lifelong friends. Offering up the book is a way of gauging how close we can really be. If someone truly doesn’t appreciate Harrison’s love of chicken thighs or isn’t struck by the last lines of “Heart Food in L.A.,” then I know it may be a rocky road ahead for our friendship.

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26 May 2009 | guest authors |

Beatrice @ The Merc: Sarah Rainone & Rakesh Satyal

It’s the final event of the spring season for Beatrice.com’s reading series the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction, so we’re making it a big one. Naturally, Rakesh Satyal and Sarah Rainone read from their debut novels, Blue Boy and Love Will Tear Us Apart. But I’ve also invited members of the Bushwick Book Club to perform original songs based on those novels—and there’s also a very strong possibility that Sarah and Rakesh will demonstrate their own musical talents before the evening’s through!

To accomodate a larger audience (we’re hoping BookExpo America attendees will want to go out on the town before the trade show begins), this reading will be held at The Slipper Room (167 Orchard Street). Cash bar opens at 6 p.m., and the evening’s festivities start at 7 p.m. If you’d like to give me a sense of how many people to expect, an RSVP would be helpful, but you’re welcome to come without emailing ahead of time, too.

20 May 2009 | events |