Not New for Long...But Not Long, Either

I don't usually use any of my blogs to promote the place I work. It's not because it's not worthy of promotion, but I tend to like to keep Work and Not Work separate to some degree. Nevertheless, every once in awhile I realize that I should say something about the things I get from the place I spend a large portion of my life at, and one of these things is the number of nice, smart and interesting people I've worked with over the years at Bookshop Santa Cruz.

 Recently, I've had a good example of this in the form of Matchbook Story. I've mentioned this literally tiny publishing venture in other places, but recently it has all come together in a particularly felicitous way for the greater Bookshop community, past and present.. A couple of months ago Michele Norris of NPR visited the bookstore while promoting her new book, The Grace of Silence. By all accounts it was an excellent and thought provoking event, and we are lucky that the man who interviewed her for the event, Rick Kleffel, recorded it, so that you can find it  here under the November 21, 2010 listing. Anyway, somehow it came up that Ms. Norris had become interested in flash fiction, because in her hectic life she doesn't have much time for the longer version. One of the staff members who was helping to run the event that night, the quick thinking Kat Bailey, realized that she had an example of a form that puts even flash fiction to the test. She handed her Matchbook No. 3.

Here is Ms. Norris's blog post about this experience.

So the cool part for me is that the author of the story that struck Ms. Norris is my friend Susan McCloskey, our current events coordinator; the editor of Matchbook Story is my friend and sometime coworker, Kyle Peterson and the sponsor of this particular Matchbook was the Delmarette Cafe, which is co-owned by my other friend and former co-worker, Jennifer Toner. It might sound like cronyism, but trust me, none of us are rich enough to be cronies in that particular way.

Check out Michelle's blog. Submit to Matchbook Story. (It's fun!) and if you ever get to Santa Cruz, you have got to check out Jen's cupcakes.