Our Lana of the Camellias

Artist Lana Gentry looking intensely meditative
with A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage.

People sometimes send me pictures of themselves with a book of mine, and occasionally I receive the gift of a toddler or baby with one of my books--they tend to devour them at that age. But here is Lana Gentry, rocking her reading glasses and cradling A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage. Lana is a self-taught artist, and she is wonderfully feisty and funny.

What has the lovely Ms. Lana been up to lately? She interviewed Robert Crumb for LoBurn, hugged the wonderfully insane (all that maniacal cross-hatching!) Laurie Lipton and the hunky Thor aka Thomas Gunter, and curated a show at Hyaena Gallery in L. A. Also in 2013, she had a show in China. China! What fun . . .

A curious thing that's always both old and new is her ongoing series of portraits: that is, some 360 portraits have been made of her by various artists. You can find a lot of them on her facebook page.

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Shall be back home very soon--I'm currently having a pleasant evening at a 1796 bed and breakfast. I have a jolly little fire in my private parlor, and my two rooms are crammed with books and movies. It was a good trip . . . I had good visits with my mother and eldest child, visited Wofford College classes and did a reading at the invitation of Jeremy L. C. Jones, and stayed with artist Mary Bullington on my trip north.