There have been so many wonderful moments in the month since GUTS’ publication day! I’ve gotten many messages from friends and family as they’ve read and enjoyed the book, and had several experiences talking about GUTS and reading from the book in public venues. Huge thanks to all of you for reading GUTS, for coming to my events, for sending me photos of your copies of GUTS “in the wild.” A few people/events I want to highlight:

• This week I am proud to be a sponsor for the wonderful Seattle Review of Books. All week they will feature an excerpt from GUTS and purchase links. They have been a pleasure to work with and I love their sponsorship program.
• My first-ever radio interview on WRITERS ON WRITING is now available as a podcast. My interview starts around the 29-minute mark, though it’s worth listening to the first interview with Attica Locke too. Thank you Marrie Stone!
• My publication day began on a poignant note with an email from my Kindergarten, First, & Second grade teacher from Shady Hill School, Louise McIlhenny. Louise was visiting her daughter Emily, who was born at the end of my 2nd grade year. Emily lives in the Boston area and her twins go to Shady Hill. Louise sent me the photo below, of her with her twin granddaughters and GUTS, in my former classroom where Louise taught me how to write. 

Receiving this photo, and the accompanying praise from my former teachwr, is one of the moments that makes the whole book-publishing effort worth it.

• I had a wonderful launch party  hosted by Hugo House at the beautiful Hotel Sorrento in Seattle. Approximately 80 people attended. I didn’t know that I knew 80 people in Seattle, let alone that I knew that many who would come to my party. Friends from all parts of my Seattle life were there, and even one of my doctors showed up. I got my hair done and wore the sparkliest piece of clothing I’ve ever owned.
• I had two great events in Colorado: a talk at the Bud Werner Memorial Library in my former temporary home of Steamboat Springs. Family, friends, and strangers braved a huge snowstorm to come hear me talk. Then I headed to Boulder for a reading at the wonderful Trident Bookstore & Cafe, where I read to a friendly audience of strangers and friends, including childhood classmate from ages 4-15 Matthew Cushing, who is now a g.i. radiologist in Boulder. What are the odds of our lives intersecting in this way?? My dear friend Ross McCall interviewed me onstage at the Trident. He thoroughly prepared and did a beautiful job. I’m thinking of asking him to accompany me on the remainder of my tour.
• The Trident is an awesome bookstore. They were great hosts, bought some copies of GUTS for their store, and shelved me two books away from STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER by Tom Robbins, a favorite book when I lived in Colorado. So, career goal accomplished.

It’s finally here: the publication day for GUTS!! I’m over the moon that this long-awaited day has finally arrived. Tonight is the first of many celebrations and events: a launch party hosted by the wonderful Hugo House.

For the past few weeks, as people have received and read advance copies of GUTS, I’ve been sent the loveliest messages. One of my favorites came from my Kindergarten, first-, and second-grade teacher, who interrupted her reading to email me and tell me how proud of me she was. Thank you all so much for your support and kind words; they mean the world to me.

Lots of GUTS In the Wild photos sent to me, including this one from my aunt the terrific  photographer:

Tin House, the fabulous magazine, book press, and writers workshop (where I’ve had the fortune to be a participant 3 times) has kindly posted an excerpt from GUTS on their website. And I made the delightful discovery that Seattle Review of Books has featured my book launch as one of the best literary events of the week. Side note: the quote they provide is not from anything I’ve ever written, and doesn’t have the facts of my illness correct. It doesn’t matter, but I just don’t want you all to think I ever went 2 months without eating. I’m sorry for the person who has – that sounds worse than anything I ever faced.

The launching of my first book is a surreal moment. I don’t think it’s possible to pause and soak it all in, but I’m doing my best to savor the experience. I feel very fortunate to have a book out in the world. Thank you Vine Leaves Press, and thank you readers!!

“A million ancient bees
Began to sting our knees
While we were on our knees
Praying that disease
Would leave the ones we love
And never come again”

— from On the Radio by Regina Spector

This morning, a first: me, on the radio! My friend Marrie Stone (a fellow member of Jess Walter’s Rock Star Workshop at the 2016 Tin House Summer Workshop in Portland) co-hosts a program called Writers on Writing. They have big-time people on the show: Tom Perrota. Cheryl Strayed. Roxanne Gay. And on and on. It turns out that they have debut authors too, and Marrie kindly agreed to have me.

I’ve had long-held fantasies of being on the radio, but they are more like me reading an essay I’ve written on This American Life or All Things Considered, or the director of NPR calling me up to tell me Terry Gross is retiring and would I like to take over for her? In other words, me reading things I’ve already written, or me asking the questions.

But having to speak off-the-cuff? Not really my strong suit. My kids go to a school where they have to speak publicly often, so I went to my 8-year-old, Helen, for advice.

“Be prepared,” she told me. “Imagine what questions they are going to ask you, and think about how you’ll answer them.” Very impressive for her to know that’s exactly what to do. So I did. I was nervous, and I may have stammered and um-ed my way through, but I don’t think so. My answers were long, but that’s not a fatal flaw. And I had fun! Marrie is a great interviewer. The time flew by as it does when you are talking to a friend and/or talking about yourself.

The station, KUCI, is in California, so the interview took place over the phone. Even so, I made it a special occasion work day by showering and putting on a nice sweater and a special necklace so that I would feel more like an almost-47-year-old soon-to-be-published author. My dog (ironically, considering the book’s subject) developed a case of intestinal distress, so the hour before the interview saw me running back and forth from yard to house, amassing a pile of amusements for the dog to entertain herself with outside that would not further the distress. She would bark to come in, I knew, so I positioned myself in the corner of the house farthest from the back yard: Helen’s bed. So there I sat among the stuffed animals in my nice clothes, hoping the occasional barks couldn’t be heard through the phone line.

Here’s the part where I would include the link to the show’s podcast, if I’d been patient enough to wait for this blog post until that came out. But I wasn’t, so I’ll post it when it’s available. In the meantime, here’s another photo of GUTS In the Wild:

Isn’t that fireside the coziest? This is a special GUTS photo, taken by our dear friend and Beth’s former husband, Kevin from the home he built himself in Sitka. So GUTS has already left the Continental US! I hope she’ll continue to be well-traveled.

Soon I head to beautiful Whidbey Island to prepare for my upcoming events in support of GUTS. I now have several things on my calendar: author talks and readings and even a radio appearance!

Here is my first photo of GUTS in the wild, Christmas Day 2017, Raglan, New Zealand:

Thank you Penny for sending this photo and thank you Dan for gifting an advanced copy to Penny for Christmas. I like the look of my book nestled among the tropical fruit.

I’m feeling overwhelmed (in a good, awash in gratitude kind of way) for all of the support I’ve received from friends and family emailing me to tell me how much they like the book, or that they’ve ordered it, or that they are bringing their entire book group to my launch party! It’s a too-many-people-to-thank situation all around, but I’m going to thank a few anyway:

• A new friend, Marrie Stone, for inviting me onto her illustrious show, Writers on Writing. I’m both terrified and excited at the thought of being on a live radio show!
•  An old friend, Ross McCall, for agreeing to facilitate the Q & A at my upcoming reading in Boulder (and to his whole family for hosting me for 3 nights).
• The reviewer I’ve never met, who emailed me to say she’d started reading GUTS and “I’m loving it!”
• My grade school science teacher, Sally Crissman, for tracking down my blog and commenting about how excited she was to read GUTS.
• My dear friend Amy’s mother Suzie Moore for stealing Amy’s copy of GUTS and staying up all night on the red eye home reading it.
• All of the people who’ve pre-ordered.
• And of course, Matt Wiley for being a daily booster and for soloing this weekend so I can do the aforementioned Book Tour Preparation (BTP).

“And how stands the city [on a hill] on this winter night?…After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

— From President Ronald Reagan’ Farewell Address, 1989

Of the many things I don’t understand about the Executive Order banning refugees, there is this: how can you look at a photograph of a family fleeing Syria and say that they cannot come here? It is easier to discriminate against people you don’t know. Is it possible that President Trump has never met a Muslim, never met a refugee? I doubt it. I think he’s just racist.

I, on the other hand, have met Muslims and refugees. Many of them. I have worked with various refugee populations on and off for most of my adult life. In 1994, my first year out of college, I lived in Denver for 5 months.

While there I held an assortment of paid and volunteer jobs. I worked as a teacher’s aide at a day care center, and did some babysitting on the side. I wrote and edited articles for Colorado Women News magazine. I wrote a grant proposal for a group of lawyers doing pro bono work on affordable housing. And I was a tutor for a “talk time” conversation practice group for ESL students.

Our talk time group met in a dilapidated classroom of an old building in downtown Denver. The students were refugees and immigrants from Asia, Eastern Europe, Central America, Mexico. Each session, we divided into groups and were given conversation topics. At the start of our first meeting, the lead teacher made a skiing analogy. Here in Colorado, she explained, the snow is plentiful and forgiving. The sun shines over 300 days of the year.

The best skiers are the ones who learn to ski in other parts of the country, like New England. There, you ski in unforgiving cold. It’s common to ski on ice, or encounter rocks that poke up out of the snow.

“Learning English is like skiing on rocks,” she said. “Everything is easy after this.”

One conversation prompt that I remember is when we discussed the phrase “pet peeve.” I was partnered with a teenaged girl who’d recently arrived from Vietnam. She was in the advanced class, and seemed like she’d been rock skiing for awhile. I struggled to explain what a “pet peeve” meant – something unimportant that bothers you. I thought of the two men I shared a house with, friends of a college friend of mine.

“After they get a dish out of the cupboard, they leave the cupboard door open. It drives me crazy.”

“Oh,” she said. “Like when my sister leaves a light on after she leaves the room. I hate that. It’s a waste of electricity!”

Did we talk about other pet peeves, so that my student understood they weren’t limited to housekeeping irritations? I don’t remember. I do remember that Talk Time volunteer was my favorite of the positions I held while living in Denver. I loved the energy exuded by everyone in that class. They were so excited to learn English well enough that they could get jobs, go to school, conduct the various transactions of their new American lives. As a volunteer, I knew little about the situations that had led them to come to the United States, and nothing about all of the hoops they’d jumped through just to be allowed to board the plane.

I wonder where that woman is now – does she still live in Denver? Did she become a citizen? Does she still have family in Vietnam, or anyone trying hard to get to the U.S.? Maybe she has children, and admonishes them to turn off the lights when they leave the room. Maybe they’ve become skiers there in Colorado, where the snow is champagne powder and the sun shines all winter long.