Windstorms, a Jack Straw Seattle Library Reading, the new Redactions and a Reddit Interview

Yesterday was the (almost final) Jack Straw reading – the entire crowd of us, 12 writers of poetry and prose, read in this giant auditorium at the intimidatingly large downtown Seattle Library. The only drawback was that we had a windstorm so extreme it left 150,000 people out of power (ours was flickering most of the morning) and the bridge we use to go to Seattle was closed (because of waves and wind?) until…just before we rolled onto it at 1:15. So we got there safely. When Glenn dropped me off at the downtown corner where the library is located, the wind was blowing so hard I couldn’t see in any direction and it was pretty tough walking even a short distance – I mean, some serious wind, not like usual when they say “Windstorm” and it’s like, 20-30 miles an hour. This was, you know, Virginia-post-hurricane wind, or Ohio pre-tornado wind. Serious.

So, this slightly blurry footage is from that reading. The lights made recording difficult, but I think the library will have a podcast of it eventually as well.

Also, my contributor AND subscriber copy of Redactions came in the mail. Besides Redactions being a reliable favorite of mine for some years, I have several friends in there (Susan Rich, Michael Meyerhofer, Mary Biddinger) and my poem “Epilogue (a Story for After)” is, well, it’s one of my favorites from my new apocalypse manuscript. And a bonus surprise – on the last page of the journal was an ad for Unexplained Fevers! It made me feel like the book was real all over again.

In other social media, I’m appearing on Reddit for an interview! I’ve never done this before, and I’m grateful to Ryan Tullis and his gang there for their invitation. It’s happening on November 5. Here’s the link if you’d like to ask a question, I’ll do my best to answer it! I haven’t done much with Reddit yet but it seems like an interesting forum.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Poetry/comments/1pi1z5/jeannine_hall_gailey_poet_laureate_of_redmond_wa/