Today’s event -- I was moderator on a memoir panel at the first annual Philadelphia Festival of Books -- went really well, with one tiny glitch.
First, I was so nervous about introducing Elizabeth Gilbert, Julie Powell and Darcey Steinke that I neglected to introduce myself.
Yep. Totally forgot. Just walked up to the podium and started blah blah blah-ing about renovations at the library and the stellar assembly of talent, which I’m sure led many audience members to say, “Who is this lady?”
Ah well. I was kind of nervous after careful reading of the books’ acknowledgements revealed that all of the authors know each other, and I was worried they’d do that fancy-schmancy-New-York-writer-snooty-gang-up, but the three of them could not have been nicer, more friendly or more forthcoming about their books, their blogs, the charge of narcissism leveled at anyone who thinks her own life might make interesting reading (Julie Powell, whose blog became an actual blog-to-book success story, sort of shrugged and said, “yeah, I like writing about myself, and I don’t care what people think about me.”)
All of them were eloquent about the question of what led them to writing their memoirs