last week’s launch…

…exceeded my expectations! On Tuesday I had a phenomenal conversation with Jehan Giles at The Salt Eaters Bookshop out in Los Angeles. How I wish I could visit the store and meet Hazel and Asha in person instead of on screen. We’re still trying to put up a staged reading of Say Her Name here in Chicago but if Omicron weren’t raging across the country, I’d fly out and hold a reading in their amazing art space. I realize I want to start small with the play—have a local reading and then decide if I want to scale up. Really, I want to reach young people and they’re glued to their screens, not going to the theater. Maybe a non-narrative film with different actors performing the poems makes more sense than putting on a play…that was one conversation I had last week and it will continue when I meet with my team on Thursday. On Wednesday I gave three book talks at a school in Brooklyn and then I had a Zoom meeting with the Black woman producer of Chicago Tonight’s Black Voices. That interview took place on Friday after I signed about sixty books at Seminary Co-Op Bookstore here in Hyde Park. They handled orders from Thursday’s launch event at the University of Chicago Lab School—over one hundred students tuned in from home with their families! Needless to say, by the time I reached the end of last week, I was exhausted…but also very grateful for all the people who made the launch such a success. The interview aired Saturday night (you can watch it here) and a couple of days later I got a snarky 3am email from a rightwing troll…one of Trump’s minions, no doubt, wondering why I don’t write a children’s book about things that matter to him (violence against the police). Yesterday I got a nice email from a special education teacher who struggles to find “mirror books” for her students, and I did a virtual author talk for 180 appreciative students in MO. A couple more meetings this week and then some time to rest and write before the Canadian press events start next month…