A quick note from Chicago:
A. I did not pack enough sweaters, mittens, or snow boots for this trip. Ice on the ground yesterday. Brrrrr! Record-breaking snowfall the day of my reading.
B. Chicago is a beautiful city. Architecture, museums, parks. Art Institute still wonderful. Although the fab Chagall stained glass was in storage. Got to go to a “Chocolate, Cheese and wine bar.” I think this trend should catch on.
C. The Bookslut Reading was crowded (although poor Ander Monson got snowed in, so it was just fictionist and poet Catherynne M. Valente and me) and I thought went pretty well. Catherynne read stepmother and Rapunzel poems, and stories about a princes on quests to kill monsters. So, of course, a good reading partner for me! A charming audience in attendance.
D. Poor husband G has finally caught my evil bronchitis, so the poor sweetie has been sick the whole trip. I’m still on antibiotics, now he is too!
E. Uneven internet connections are frustrating. Especially for people who almost exclusively use e-mail to communicate with others.
More when I get home Saturday…Hope you are all warmer than I!
Where I’ll be: The Windy City – Chicago
Here’s what I’ll be doing:
http://www.bookslut.com/readings.html
Reading at the Hopleaf 2nd floor
5148 N Clark Street
7:30 PM Wednesday the 11th
with Ander Monson and Catherynne M. Valente
Come by, say hi, and all that good stuff! Wish me luck!
Be back next week!
Thanks for all your well-wishes! I finally started to feel better yesterday. The 80-degrees-and-blue-sky-sunshine weather probably didn’t hurt. I had a job interview at U of Washington. Then Glenn took me out to lunch, and we took a walk underneath blooming apple and cherry trees. I had a profound sense of gratefullness, inner peace, happiness, what have you. The opposite of angst or mourning. I was happy to be out of bed, in the sun, with the spring all around. Happy to be with Glenn (it’s almost thirteen years now!) Happy for the chance to live my life. I still don’t have a place to live in a month, or a job yet. But I don’t know. I feel peaceful about everything.
Congratulate Kelli for her big win at The Atlantic!
Getting ready for the trip to Chicago next week to read with the Bookslut reading series. this little book
sure has kept me busy. If you live there and want to get together for coffee or anything, drop me a line.
Looking at a new phase of life. I’ve graduated, I’m (fairly) healthy, I’m ready to work again, bring home a (steady, non-freelance) paycheck, do something with my head and hands besides classwork. I’m sending out my second book, and people seem to like the poems. Two more acceptances this week from my Japanese-folk-tale sequence.
Happy Easter weekend. I’m going to dye some eggs and eat a bunny cookie. Wow, this post is too happy. It almost doesn’t sound like a poet lives here! LOL.
- At April 04, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
4
I’ve never had to cancel a reading before – I’m really sorry that I won’t be able to perform tonight at ParkPlace Books. Doctor’s orders to stay in bed and keep my lung infection from turning into pneumonia. But you should all go see Natasha Moni, who is a very talented poet and Lana Ayers, another terrific poet who is MC-ing.
So to those I miss – I’m sorry! Have a great time without me.
In other news, blech. I’ve been given the grandfather of all drugs, apparently, to treat a very intractable deal in the sinuses and lungs. It’s called Avelox. May it do its work quickly. I fear this has put me behind in all my scheduled work. Not to mention poetry writing and submitting. Well, it will all have to wait a little longer. Note to self: take more vitamins when travelling around for readings. Also, go to the doctor the first week you have the weird cough, not the second or third.
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
