I’m almost sorry that I’ve already spent my way through the entire GalleyCat conference travel budget for 2007, because the director of the Sanibel Island Writer’s Conference has confirmed to his local southwest Florida newspaper that Robert Olen Butler and Elizabeth Dewberry are still scheduled to appear at the four-day conference in early October. Tom DeMarchi also tells The News-Press that Butler, who’s scheduled to give the keynote address, informed him about the breakup over a month ago. “All I had to say in response was how sorry I was, and asked if there was anything they needed from me,” he told the reporter, and as far as he knew last week, the two of them were getting along fine.
Of course, that was before Butler made the mistake of using an email to tell at least a dozen people his theories about why his wife would rather be Ted Turner’s part-time lover—an email he’s now telling reporters he thinks “somebody in the New York publishing world” stole and passed on to Gawker. Sure, Bob: Some underpaid publishing apparatchik took the time to hack an FSU grad student’s computer on the off chance there might be some juicy Robert Olen Butler dirt stashed on it. That makes sense. Maybe you should try to get together with Romantic Times CEO Kathryn Falk and see where your imaginations take you.
Actually, now that I think about it, I might be more inclined to read the results of that hypothetical collaboration than the collection of severed head stories he published last year…