Reading at the Jefferson Market Public Library in New York City

Last night’s reading at the Jefferson Market Library in New York City marks the official end of my fall promotion tour for Their Houses.  I have another couple of events planned and potential, and I have some further ideas, but I’m closing it down for now.  It has been a wonderful three months of readings, workshops, interviews and visiting with old friends and making new ones.  Honestly, I’m going to glow for a long time.
Last night Diane Simmons and I presented “Beyond the Hudson: New York Writers Who Still

Go Home” to more than thirty people.  Many of them were old friends (some of mine from forty and more years ago and continuing), but others came because they had a connection to West Virginia or were simply interested in the topic.  One older woman said she was a native New Yorker and always admired the courage of those of us who came from elsewhere!  We had audience members from Brooklyn and New York, and at least one New Jersey friend.  My writers group, to whom I dedicated Their Houses, was there, and a couple of present and former students, and our nephew and his wife!  But others came because the topic interested them, and Diane and I included a good period of discussion after I read the Mountain Militia Chapter from Their Houses and she read her essay about explaining the results of the 2016 election in her home region of Eastern Oregon, the high desert, to northeastern intellectuals  This essay was published earlier this year in Czech in a major Czech Republic magazine.  She read it in its English version, and talked about how there is a gap in many countries, including the Czech Republic, between urban and rural people.
We had a lovely warm discussion after the readings, and I sold a few books and feel all warm and fuzzy this morning.