Riverrun Bookstore in Portsmouth, NH, hosted the winners of the Piscataqua Press 2014 novel contest.  The room was crowded, the air conditioning struggled – but everyone was so excited, the atmosphere crackled with energy. My cowinners, Catherine Geiger who read from her book The Witch Market and Ben Schwartz who read from his book The Drift of Things, rocked the house.  And their books are wonderful and must be read!

With quavering voice and shaking limbs, I managed to read from the beginning of As If Women Mattered, and was blessed by an audience who laughed and nodded at all the right places.

And so off these books go – into the world.  And as Billy Collins says in his poem:

stay out as late as you like,

don’t bother to call or write

and talk to as many strangers as you can.