So Wednesday me and MJ went down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to let me speak before the Mississippi Writers’ Guild chapter in Gulfport. We had a good trip down and got turned around once or twice trying to find the place the event was at, but we managed and had a lovely time.
I did my storyboarding speech that I gave to the students at the Southern Festival of Books, and it seemed to go over really well. I read it along with Tommy Hebert’s first story again, and everyone seemed to like how that fit in with the lecture.
And then we had a great Q&A session, with questions ranging from how I wrote the story to how I had selected the MFA program I attended. It was an interesting mix of people–some older than me, some about the same, and three that definitely seemed to be the young ones in the crowd. But the room was full, and they even had to bring in extra chairs towards the end.
At the end before I left, I handed out my bookmarks with ordering information and my website on them if they wanted to pick up the book or just check me out some more. Those have been the very best idea I had throughout this process–so cheap and so easy to hand out.
Next Saturday is my last event for June–a book signing at a coffeeshop/bookstore named Coffee Prose in the heart of Jackson. We’re going to do it from 9 am-11 am in the morning, then go to one of our favorite restaurants for lunch. I’m looking forward to that.
Just one event in July–I’ll be doing a Zoom meeting for a group of writers in Nevada on July 6, Sunday afternoon. I have no idea what this one is going to be like, so that will be interesting to find out about.
And hopefully next week I’ll get my manuscript back with new edits and see where we can go from there. Happy writing!
Julie Liddell Whitehead 