Tayari's Blog: Texas is for Lovers Writers

Last night, Monqiue Truong and I gave a reading at the Life Sciences Library at UT Austin. She read from The Book Of Salt, which has won every award ever. I read from The Untelling. Sassy, independent bookstore, Book Woman, handled the vending.

In the afternoon, I attended the Arizona State University celebration reading. All of our old prfoessors read and said nice things about the alumni.

Going to this event was a sort of unnerving experience. There was a certain level of fun-- I walked in LATE after a few tequila gimlets (my new favorite drink.) There was a sort of thirll about engaging in such adolescent behavior so late in life.

Ron Carlson, Melissa Pritchard, T.M. McNally, Beckian Fritz Goldberg read from their work. Everyone was kind enough to keep it short. Jewell Parker Rhodes, my advisor, for some reason wasn't there.

But the reason it was unnerving wasn't all about the tequila gimlets. It was more about being in that room and looking at the people I had gone to school with. We all had such high hopes back then. And maybe some of us still do. But this publishing business is hard and it isn't fair. There were people in the room who are fine writers, but don't have a book yet. And there are other people for whom the inverse is true. And there were people there who were such condescending racist $*#&@s when we were in school and they were present as well, trying to be nice and pretend that everyone was happy.

I hung around a bit longer than I wanted to, as I had to see Ron Carlson, my mentor and good friend. I hugged him. Told him how much he means to me. And then I got the hell out.