It’s always great fun to run author events and get to meet and hang out with my favorite types of people: authors and readers!
Last Sunday night Open Book Bookstore ran an event with Jami Attenberg and renowned local author Jennifer Weiner. I have met Jami before when we did an event for her novel The Middlesteins. That was one of those events where I had to pick her up at her hotel downtown and drive her to and from the event. That’s always special to have all that time alone with an author to chat, and Jami struck me then as very thoughtful, straightforward, and fun.
In all my years in the Philly lit scene, however, I’ve never met Jen Weiner, and she’s kind of a literary rock star here, so it was exciting to get to meet her. She was lovely and so agreeable and accommodating to work with. And it turns out her husband and I went to the same high school!
The event was at a new venue for us, the very cool, practically too hip for us Tattooed Mom on South Street. Hard not to love a bar with a name like that, plus great tater tots! It’s a terrific space with funky décor, a bar, and a room in back that’s actually very quiet for readings. Thanks so much to Robert and to Wedge for helping make this event possible!
Jen interviewed Jami about her new book, All Grown Up, and also talked about her two new books, her collection of essays about her life and about writing, Hungry Heart, and her new middle grade novel, The Littlest Bigfoot. Both are new genres for this prolific author.
A few of our other favorite local authors came to the event, and it was fun, as always, to hang with Liz Moore and Janet Benton. Janet’s eagerly awaiting publication of her debut novel Lilli de Jong, and Liz’s terrific most recent novel, The Unseen World, will soon be out in paperback. We’ll be hosting events for both of those books!