Kelli Russell Agodon’s debut Hourglass Museum reading and writer movies
- At March 23, 2014
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 0
Just back from Kelli’s lovely debut reading for her newest book, Hourglass Museum.
It was an absolutely perfect spring day, the cherry blossoms were blooming, the mountains were all out, and I spent a great day at one of my favorite places, Open Books, with some of my favorite people, including those pictured: Kelli, Martha Silano, Kelly Davio, Kathleen Flenniken, and Peter Pereira. After the party, Glenn and I went for a quick walk at Green Lake park, just in time to watch the sun go down.
I just watched the indie film “Authors Anonymous,” about a writer’s group gone bad when one member finds unexpected success. I was reminded that the writing group where Kelli and I met over ten years ago is a very special group. No one has really imploded – at least not yet! And I think we try to really support each other, in success and in rejection. (That’s like, the “in sickness and in health” of writer friend vows, I believe.) And a lot of the people at the reading today were people that embraced and supported me when I first came to Seattle (gulp) fourteen years ago, (can it really be that long?) excited to be in a big time “reading” city and make friends with real writers! I also loved that at this reading, there were people of every generation, from 80 to under 18, it gives me hope for humanity when I see stuff like that. “Authors Anonymous” was a little dark and had a lot of cliches (some, sadly, true, but still), I preferred the other indie writer film I watched recently, “Adult World,” about a young, straight-A fresh-out-of-undergrad poet who spends all her money on writing contests, gets cut off by her parents and has her car stolen, and takes a job at a porn shop while stalking an older, bitter poet (one of her heroes who teaches at a local college) demanding that he mentor her (John Cusack in what I thought was a very charming turn.)