As a former Seattlite, I’m sort of sorry I missed the annual Bumbershoot arts festival last weekend, because it’s always a great mix of music and literature. Luckily, Post-Intelligencer book reporter John Marshall’s preview filled me in on what was happening at “the frontier of edgy,” with “such rising lit stars as Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Vendela Vida and Aimee Bender.” That’s right, rising–but we expect big things from that Eggers fellow any day now.
Marshall also mentions Shelley Jackson, who was there collecting volunteers for “Skin,” the short story that’s being tattooed, word by word, on the flesh of 2,095 fans. She’s a “former Seattle writer, who now lives in Brooklyn,” while novelist Wesley Stace (who is also musician John Wesley Harding) is “a former Seattle resident” who, his website will readily tell you, now lives in Brooklyn. Surprisingly, Marshall did not put these clues together; you’d think that a creative couple this hip would be hard to miss–especially since Jackson turns up in the acknowledgments of Stace’s Misfortune.* Then again, he doesn’t mention the Eggers/Vida marriage, either, so maybe there’s some sort of literary principle involved.
Anyway, I hear the festival went great, and attendees contributed more than $30,000 to the Hurricane Victims Relief Fund. Eggers and Vowell–along with Daniel Handler and members of Death Cab for Cutie–took part in a separate fundraiser for 826 Seattle, the latest outpost in Eggers’ string of youth-oriented writing centers.
*On the other hand, if–as an anonymous tipster pointed out–they’re not actually a couple any more, to the point where Stace went and got himself married over the summer–well, then, the omission makes a lot more sense, and I feel woefully behind the times.