In the News: Minneapolis Star Tribune

Yesterday (Black Friday), the Minneapolis Star Tribune published--on the front page!--a story about me, Night Writers, Gabriel's Horn, and the rise of indie publishing, written by Hannah Covington and photographed by David Joles.  It can be read online at the Star Tribune.

I was really impressed with all the research Hannah did for this piece, and the number of people she talked to--not only a number of members of Night Writers, Jack Stanton, co-founder of Gabriel's Horn, and Chris Powell who now runs GH with me, but also representatives of Bowker, the company that issues ISBNs (which every published book and e-book must have) and the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association.

In addition to all of that and phone interviews with Jack, Chris, Genny and Lyn, Hannah spent an evening at one of our Night Writers meetings as we read our pieces for the week and critiqued each others' writing, and spent nearly 4 hours at my house a week before the article came out, meeting my kids and seeing first hand a bit of what I do each day, with regards to writing, publishing, and music.

Two days before the article came out, David spent an hour, photographing what I do each morning--which in truth involves a lot of sitting at the counter with my laptop!  My older daughter, Caoimhe, by luck, had just gotten home from Tennessee (where she's studying for her Ph.D. in neurolinguistics) and arrived with the makings of cinnamon rolls, so she's in the picture above.  As a side note, Caoimhe is fluent in French, and did the French to English translations for me in Food and Feast.  

As a further side note, Caoimhe is a somewhat common name in Ireland.  It's pronounced Keeva which makes perfect sense if you're familiar with Gaelic phonetics, in which aoi makes something like an ee sound, and mh and bh both make a v sound.  It's been a great ice-breaker for her all her life and she wrote a very entertaining article about the responses to her name, her freshman year at St. John's University--including the story of one professor who pronounced it differently every day, finally stumbling on Chow Mein....Chow Mein?  Is Chow Mein here?

All the tangents and side notes aside, in addition to spending a lot of time at my laptop, most mornings I do play piano, harp, or with any luck, flute, and my daughter Cara often does sing as I play, as per the picture.

Well, truth be told, it's been months since I've had time to play flute at home.  Luckily, I teach it a couple of days a week and get to play it then.  I also played it at MacKenzie last week with Joe, who plays his cello there every week.  That was a lot of fun!  And now seems like a good time for a shameless plug.  As long as we're talking about flute, this is my favorite one--the alto flute (played here at Crossraguel Abbey).  With its lower voice, it has an incredibly rich, lush sound.  It is a terribly underused instrument, as beautiful as it is.

Ahem...back to the article--I was amazed and impressed at what went into it.  Many thanks to Hannah, David, and to Dena, my publicist, who were all part of this, and also to Night Writers, who have played a huge part in it, too.

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