Amie and Stacie are Back from Winter Insitute, Plus What's Going on This Week at Boswell?

I've spent the last 24 hours hearing about the very inspiring Winter Institute, held last week in New Orleans, from our two attendees.

Amie brought the store back a lovely gift, a fancy edition of The Works of Boswell, with gold edges and ribbon marker. It was published by Black's Readers Service, Roslyn, New York, most likely in the 1950s. I was just talking to a lawyer, who happened to grow up in that very town. We shared some memories of the duck pond and the Jolly Fisherman restaurant.

Stacie and Amie came back with lots of ideas too. I'm confident they will be better at putting at least some of them into practice than I generally am at this sort of thing.

And now, a preview of this week's events!

Tonight (Monday, January 23, 7 pm) is our long-awaited event with Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master's Son. It's so rewarding to see this book already being cited as likely to be one of the best novels of 2012.

For a taste of tonight, listen to Johnson talk about his work on NPR's Weekend Edition. And if you don't generally read this blog, why not check out my older post on The Orphan Master's Son.

On Thursday, January 26,  we're hosting the co-editors of Dispatches from the Classroom: Exercises for Creative Writers and Creative Teachers. Joseph Michael Rein, David Yost, and Chris Drew. These UWM graduate students explore issues of daily concern to creative writing instructors from many viewpoints and stands as a much-needed teaching resource for the field—by the field.

And then on Friday, January 27, it's time for Paul Wilkes, author of The Art of Confession. Since I already spoke on this book at length in another blog post, allow me to paraphrase and say that The Art of Confession draws on traditions from ancient Greece, psychoanalysis, Judaism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Islam to show readers how to incorporate a confessional practice into their daily lives.

In addition, you can say hi to Stacie at a restaurant offsite (private party, so if you weren't invited, you can't say hi unless you happen to run into her and well, maybe you should just say hi to her when she's at the store tomorrow), and Jason's going to interview Mr. Johnson for a magazine (exciting, huh?) And I've been furiously trying to enter titles for our first book fair. We're creating order pages on our website. I'm excited, but worried I won't get it done in time. Do I seem distracted? I am.

Oh, and all events are at 7 pm.