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.

You Might Not Know

Various people have tagged me for the latest (possibly annoying) meme, Things You Might Not Know About Me... But I'm officially letting Gail Dooley (professor of music at Morningside College) tag me because she asked for six items:

1. I talked in paragraphs before I was one. True.
2. As a child, I couldn't bear tags or seams. I still cut out a lot of tags. True.
3. Also as a child, I ate raw vegetables and fruit only. And dessert. I had nothing against dessert. Perhaps this is why they tell me I have no bones. Only too true.
4. This one is to go with the "six" request: I will be sixty blinking years old on the 22nd yet don't believe it. True, mostly. Now and then I believe it, mainly when my back hurts.
5. Because I was a poet and an innocent about publishing, this is how I published my first book: I read a book called Salar the Salmon (great book!) published by David R. Godine of Boston. I thought if they loved Williamson, they might like me. I put my manuscript in a little brown envelope and sent it off with a lick and a stamp in the way people used to do back in the golden age of publishing. Three months later I called the publisher. The operator had never heard of me and said to call back in three days. I did, and he had heard of me this time and said the manuscript was on Mr. Godine's desk. Took a long time to come out, but that was my first book. Absolutely true, and a good hope for innocent writers.
6. I have never looked for an agent and am spoiled on that count. My first found me when my first book was in galleys. The great Louis D. Rubin, who died (to my very deep sadness) in the past day, suggested me to my second. Now I don't have one at all and like it so far, although it has drawbacks. Some day I might embrace a third. Maybe. Or not. And the facts are true there, and the end waffley enough to pass muster.

Good night!

Thank you

to novelist Scott G. F. Bailey for a lovely piece on A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage. See it here at Six Words for a Hat. "The prose nods to Faulkner, to Shakespeare, to Yeats, to epic poetry; it vibrates with rich color and detail and feeling."

Carolina events

I've been having a good time on my second Southern ramble in the past four months... Friday I arrived in the nick of time to see Elaine Neil Orr and Kay Stripling Byer read at City Lights in Sylva. Then yesterday I zoomed off to Wofford College, where students of Jeremy L. C. Jones have been reading several of my books. And I did a reading before coming back this afternoon. I've also visited my mother and eldest son. More frolics to come!