Shortly after I arrived at the party for Jennifer Finney Boylan‘s new memoir, I’m Looking Through You, she introduced me to cartoonist Tim Kreider (left), and reminded me that I’d written about him before. Really? I asked. Yep—turns out he’s the American who entered the Iranian hate cartoon contest last year. “I still haven’t heard back from them, either,” he said jokingly. (Not sure who the fellow in the background is, but he seems to be having a good time!)
Boylan also made sure that I got to say hello to her editor, Gerry Howard, with whom she has a long history: The two worked together at Viking Penguin in the early 1980s, back when Jennifer was still James; nearly a decade later, when Howard was at W.W. Norton, he was one of the editors who tried to acquire Boylan’s debut novel, The Planets—he even had a copy of the first edition in his messenger bag that evening. (Sorry that picture didn’t turn out, guys…)