I went to Laura van den Berg‘s reading at the Orlando Public Library and it was less of a reading than an open forum/Q&A on publishing, the hows the whats the whys and Laura answered all the questions honestly and gracefully. I do wish she got the chance to read more than a small part of her short story collection but it was really awesome to meet a fellow indie author. The reading also gave me a chance to finally meet Tim Dicks. Tim is a PANK contributor and I interviewed him about his contribution. Him and his lovely fiancé were awesome to meet and I now know a writer also involved in indie lit world who lives here.
I’m starting to realize more and more that Orlando has a lot of folks here involved in indie lit, either folks who are from here, like Laura, folks who ended up here, like Tim, or folks who lived here and then moved away, like Lindsay Hunter, the author of the awesome short story collection Daddy. I’d like to figure out away to bring out the talent not involved in the open mic scene/poetry slam scene here in a creative way. I have some ideas, but won’t share them until I flesh them out a little more.
Overall, this closed an amazing week.
