Sandra Gail Lambert

A Feminist Open Mic

 
Hosted by Johnny Rocket, in the back room at Wild Iris Books, Tuesday October 26th, from 7p-10p.  A "respectful open mic environment for everyone" is promised.  Perhaps I'll go.  Perhaps I can get more of the "OLs" (as a friend of mine's queer child calls us older lesbians) to be there as well.     

Lara Zielinsky at Wild Iris Books on Saturday

Lara Zielinsky is the author of lesbian and bisexual romance and erotica and is the host of a blogtalk radio show.  At Wild Iris she'll be reading from To Love and To Cherish, an anthology of stories about lesbian relationships whose publication supports Marriage Equality USA.

So, Saturday (tomorrow), April 24 at Wild Iris Books from 2-5pm.   

I got out of town!

It was just overnight, but I am renewed.  It started at Inkwood Books in Tampa.  Wow.  It was as if I was in my very own, just for me bookstore.  The display tables had books I'd read, books that were on my bedside table, books I'd been wanting to get, books that I knew nothing about but a quick read of the back and I had to have them.  It was a literary home.

 
Then, as planned, an old friend who I reconnected with on Facebook arrived, and we went out for a really fun lunch. 

Then I went to the hotel and met up with my Tallahassee writer/editor friends in our suite.  We talked and talked and ate dinner overlooking the river and then went to hear Dorothy Allison read at the University of Tampa.  I mean, what an evening. Here's a photo of Dorothy and Tallahassee's finest writer Pat Spears.

 
Dorothy read (performed) Jason Who Will be Famous, a short story I first read in Tin House.  Of course the reading was amazing as Dorothy's always are, but also amazing, as she read the story of this young, despairing man, was the energy and attention of the audience of students.  Their lives were being changed.  You could feel it. 

And now, I'm writing.  Again.  Finally.  With new intent.   

The Passing of a Bookstore

A few weeks ago I went to Goerings Bookstore for the last time.  Taped-up boxes created a maze around the shelves.  The shelves were bare wood except for a few spots of color from non-returnable titles.  The staff, who have been working there for at least all the twenty-one years I've been in Gainesville, were expressionless at this point.  It was all so sad.  

Goerings supported authors from the local, self-published ones to New York Times bestsellers, they were open on Sunday afternoons for restorative browsing, the staff knew what they were talking about. 

A big part of my imagining about publishing a book, besides the Diane Rehms interview, was the wild and celebratory book signing at Goerings.  

The store would have been thirty nine years old this fall.  Here's an essay by Tom Rider, one of the owners, about the history of the bookstore and the market forces that led to its closing.  It is very much worth reading.

Really, so sad.     

A Parting Rant about Independent Bookstores

 

Just so you don't miss me while I'm in the Everglades, I'll leave you with a rant inspired by my writer friend Glenda Bailey-Mershon.  She asked for the latest nobel prize winner's (Herta Muller) novel at a Barnes and Noble.  They didn't have it and thought maybe they should order one. 

If a woman had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in my bookstore days, I would have made a big front display of her work.  Not only that, I would have rounded up all the stray copies of books by other winners from the store shelves (a chance to sell books that may have been getting a bit dusty) and plunked them down around her.  Finally, I would have arbitrarily decided which authors I thought should get the prize and added them with an attractively composed sign to that effect.

This is what independent bookstores do.  So there.  Click here to find the ones in your area.
   

Something to Declare - Reading and Book Signing

 Wild Iris Books, Friday October 23rd, 7pm - I'll be reading from my contribution to the anthology Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing.  There are all sorts of good parts to the writing life, but this part, the part where I get to perhaps make a little money for an independent bookstore, thrills my old bookseller's heart. 

Anyway, I promise you a tale of churning rapids, naked women, the sweet gorgeousness of a Florida landscape, and, not least of all, gingerbread with hot lemon sauce. (There will be no actual gingerbread - only a story about it.)

More "Something to Declare" news.

For all of us Gainesvillians, Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing is now available at Wild Iris Books.  And if my having an essay included isn't enough, here's more incentive to go get it - Booklist is giving the anthology a starred (meaning it is outstanding in its genre) review.  Whoo hoo.   

Mean Little deaf Queer - by Terry Galloway

Wild Iris Books, this Thursday, August 13th, 6pm - I'll be there for a reading by Terry Galloway of her new memoir Mean Little deaf Queer.

Dorothy Allison says, "This story is true and passionate and fearless and funny as hell when it is not heartbreaking.  I expect this book to charm the hell out of great numbers of people, piss off a few, and give hope to many more."  

 

Oh yeah, this is going to be a great evening.  

Wild Iris Books

It's been two days of revision at the sentence level.  It had gotten so that whenever someone said something to me, I'd see their words as if they were a strip of closed captioning.  Then I'd add commas and rearrange phrases.  It had to stop.  I had to clear my brain.

And now, after a night of dancing and lovely flirting at Wild Iris Books, I don't care if you run your sentences on it won't even make me blink.  To seriously dance will remove all my worries about split infinitives, and upon arriving home, even dangling modifiers left my mind. 

Well, I and those dangling modifiers I brought home with me are going to bed.  Sweet Dreams, all.      

 

Wild Iris Books supports writers

Sure, your local, independent bookstore provides reading and booksigning events, they give front shelf room to the work of homegrown authors, they hand sell your book to customers, and they are excited with you about any writing success, but my local feminist bookstore serves even more of my writing needs.

This past Saturday, after a week of near cloistering in my writing bed, I put on an orange bra and a red dress and went dancing at Wild Iris Book's monthly women's dance.  It was perfect for post-writing immersion - social and physical and filled with lesbians looking good.  It was so much fun that the next day I had to take extra Extra Strength Tylenol. 

Once again, thanks and appreciation to our bookstores.