The Portland Book Festival

In which I meet my literary hero.

For my birthday weekend celebration, my partner, Ashley, put together a surprise trip to Portland for the Portland Book Festival.

In particular, we saw George Saunders speak and he graciously signed my copies of his books, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain and Lincoln in the Bardo. I already had bought an advanced signed copy of his newest book, Liberation Day. I was able to trade a few words with George through our masks about Story Club (I wore the T-shirt) and about living in SoCal and his tour. Such a pleasure to meet this generous man.

I’ve read all of his books now. They hold a special place on my bookshelf along with my long time literary hero, William Faulkner, the only two authors whose books I own copies of all of them.

George shared the stage with writer Jess Walter and was interviewed by Geoff Norcross in a beautiful church. It was a packed house and a fantastic event at 10:00 in the morning.

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The rest of the day we spent at Powell’s Books and met up with a friend of Ashley’s who happened to be in town.

Part of the festivities were two great meals, a delicious seafood dinner at Southpark Seafood and a dinner at Mother’s Bistro. We also played a couple of bucks on the lottery, grown to 1.6 billion dollars, and I won $5.00 on a $1.00 Keno ticket. We picked 10 numbers and hit ZERO! haha. We put our winnings right back in for the 1.9 billion dollar drawing on Monday. Suffice it to say, I will not be writing about winning that lottery on my substack - when I win it.

I already feel like I’ve won the lottery with Ashley in my corner and planning such a fantastic birthday weekend. And it’s been such a pleasure to be a part of Story Club with George Saunders. That’s definitely winning the literary lottery.

I’ll be back with more about my memoir on Friday. Let me know how your fall season is going. The holidays are coming!

Until Friday, stay warm and I’ll . . .

Just keep writing!