Did you go to Wordstock this year? I go every year. I love it and look forward to it every fall. I've had a lot of milestones at Wordstock -- my first book Food Lover's Guide to Portland was born at Wordstock and a lot of other good fortune and good times have come to be for me at festivals past.
This year I tabled all day Saturday and Sunday at the Hawthorne Books booth. I've been an editor and publicity director at Hawthorne since late summer/early fall of 2009. Three years! I got to hang out with a lot of our authors (and sneak away for a couple of their cool events) as well as with publisher Rhonda Hughes and senior editor Adam O'Connor Rodruguez. Good times.
I also got to spend time with the publishers of the book that I am currently writing with John Gorham -- the Toro Bravo Cookbook: The Making, Breaking and Riding of a Bull. We are so happy to be doing this book with McSweeney's. Dream come true.
I hosted the McSweeney's folks during Wordstock this year so that meant late night karaoke, 20 boxes of books in my front room, plum wine on the front porch and a lot of fine eating and drinking at Toro Bravo, of course (we had a huge dinner where cava and txakoli flowed freely and we tried a lot of the new dishes inspired by our recent trip to Madrid and Barcelona), Biwa and Tasty n Sons to name a few spots that we went. They even had to break into my house once while they were here. I won't give you all the details on that but it worked.
AND I got to finally meet our high-rolling, ass kicking literary agent Kimberly Witherspoon. We're very lucky to have Kim on our side and it was great to finally meet her in person. She moderated a panel this year at Wordstock and while she was in town she got to have a really nice meal at Toro.
Our literary agent, Kimberly Witherspoon, of InkWell Management moderating a panel at Wordstock 2012.
So, if you didn't get to Wordstock this year please try to make it next year. It's an incredible annual Portland event for readers, writers, editors, publishers -- basically all book lovers. And it might just visit some very good fortune on you as well. You never know...
Wordstock www.wordstockfestival.com