The Book Sense 76
-- The Children's 76
-- Category Top 10s

We've been curious about what goes on when authors are out on the road, reading and signing their books. We keep a listing of some of the events at BookSense.com, but we generally only get to readings in the New York area.

So we asked a few authors if they would send us tour diaries. This first one is by Kelly Link (Stranger Things Happen). Kelly toured with Shelley Jackson (The Melancholy of Anatomy). They drove across the country reading from their debut short-story collections on a 16-bookshop tour that took them from their hometown of Brooklyn, NY, to great independent bookshops in Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Day Four: Driving Westward
by Kelly Link

 

Kelly and the wire bull

In which we drive. We listen to the Flash Girls and more Magnetic Fields.

We are amused by all the billboards promising us CHEESE. We stop for gas, but we resist the CHEESE blandishments.

I climb into the back and nap, head pointing toward the front. It's windy, and the van lurches from side to side. I dream that my feet are cold, and then realize that I'm awake. Shelley is pulling into a gas station, her hand out the window, clamped around the mirror, which has broken into several pieces. She's been driving like this for 15 minutes. We buy duct tape, and she tapes the pieces of the mirror into the frame. Later, it turns out that one of the speakers (which has been falling out of the door whenever the door is opened) will no longer work. We are undaunted.

We stop somewhere in the middle of Nebraska, and Shelley writes her tour journal. I do not write my journal. I am depressed by Nebraska. I don't feel that I've seen it at its best, and I feel obscurely guilty about this. I have not seen the World's Largest Ball of Twine, or The World's Second-Largest Ball of Twine (conveniently located in the town next to the town which boasts the largest ball).

I fall asleep.

Shelly and the wire bull

Kelly thinks she may yet send us more...!

Day One
Day Two
Day Three

[1] DreamHaven Books, 912 W. Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408 (612) 823-6161 http://www.dreamhavenbooks.com/

Further Reading:

• Pen/Faulkner winners
• Summer Paperback Book Sense 76
• Shelley Jackson interview
• Eva Ibbotson interview
• Maureen McHugh
• Events Calendar

Browse Archived Interviews
Browse Archived Excerpts

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