Brian Burt's Blog: Work in Progress - Posts Tagged "read-local"

My wife and I are both fans of the local food movement. We're members of a CSA sponsored by our area nature center and love eating at a nearby restaurant that specializes in serving locally sourced foods, from meat to produce to dairy to beer and wine. "Eat local" is a familiar rallying cry. Well, thanks to the work of our wonderful local library, I had a chance to apply this to books.

The first annual local author fair drew far more writers than I would have expected in this corner of west Michigan. It was a great experience meeting other kindred spirits: I don't really know other writers and hadn't met many face to face prior to the event. I'm a member of an excellent virtual critique group, the Critters online writers workshop, and that's been invaluable. Critiquing other writers' works has proven more enlightening than reviewing others' critiques of my own stories. I always feel like I take away as many insights from analyzing someone else's tale as I give (which may just be a sad commentary on the quality of my feedback). Online communities are great for bridging geographical boundaries and connecting like-minded people with shared interests. Still, I'm old enough that emoticons don't pack the same punch as a handshake and a smile.

So meeting other authors in the flesh, all living within an hour's drive of my home, made the event special. It piqued my interest enough that I ignored my usual genre boundaries and bought the eBooks of several local novelists who write outside the realms of SF & fantasy. I gobbled up The Whole Golden World, by Kristina Riggle; Chemical Attraction, by Christina Thompson; and The Turning, by Jennifer Armintrout. I enjoyed them immensely, especially because I could place their creators in nearby communities and put faces with the names. They had very different styles, different voices, different visions, but a unifying thread: locality.

I'll always be a science fiction and fantasy writer, and reader, at heart. But I've learned some valuable lessons from expanding my reading horizons... by narrowing the focus to the talented practitioners in my back yard. I still have quite a few locally sourced books I can't wait to consume with gusto.

I think this "read local" movement could catch on!

#SFWApro