To the best of my recollection, I’ve never been namechecked at a reading before (at least, not one I wasn’t already hosting), but one of the first things Elizabeth Hand did went she got up to read from Generation Loss at the Teachers & Writers offices Tuesday night was to ask if I was in the audience, and then request that I make sure to get a picture of her in her Electric Prunes T-shirt, so that friends would have evidence that she fulfilled her promise to wear it to the event.
While I was getting that photo during the after-party, Matthew Sharpe—who’d read a scene from Jamestown—was chatting with fans. The pairing was felicitous: Not only had Sharpe and Hand both just had their novels come out in Harcourt paperbacks, they were both examples of great writers championed by independent presses (Soft Skull for Sharpe, Small Beer for Hand). Other writers in the audience included Kit Reed, John Reed (no relation), Amanda Stern, Fran Gordon, and Peter Straub.