REDUX: Alle at The Montana Book Festival

This old lady rocked it.

As I posted last week, this weekend I was at The Montana Book Festival. I read a short story and an essay to frame the discussion on a panel about trauma. I thought it went well — but what really went well were two surprise readings. The Friday night of the Festival, we had an authors-only reading in the back room of a bar. Everyone read a short something or told a story. A well-known author read brand-new stuff, written just this week.

Then, Sunday night there was an event called Word Dog. An open mic on the back patio of (yet another) brew pub. WELCOME TO MISSOULA. Many twentysomething female poets. They were excellent! A few oldsters such as myself. I was last. It is always hard to read last! But it went really well. The youth were appreciative of my old-lady work, and the rain held off until I was half-way through the last of three flash pieces.

The final event, The Big Kahuna, was a live interview with and then a reading from Jamie Ford (The Hotel on the Corner ofBitter and Sweet) for his new novel, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy. Ford was an absolutely charming presenter, and his new book is amazing and complex and hard to sum up: he takes an historical figure, the first Chinese woman to appear in the U.S., who in reality was brought here to be exhibited like a circus creature — look! Bound feet! — and who died very sadly. Ford proceeds to make up the story of her decdndants. The section Ford read was just great. I highly recommend this book!

Many, many thanks to John Samuel Brown (Sam) for his outstanding and endless work as the Festival Director.