Elinor Nauen

I landed at 3:15 on Thursday, & by 6:15 was at the SideWalk for Prose Pros, with Alice Gordon & Thad Rutkowski. Very different in tone, reading style, subject matter but I liked both of them enormously. Sunday's Local Knowledge reading had 3 readers—Sergio Satellite, a young Dominican poet, Maggie Dubris, & Mike DeCapite—who overlapped & enhanced one another. There was some thematic resonance & so each reading magically became a commentary on & intro to the ones that followed & came before. I love when that happened. Maggie read a piece about the Gypsy flamenco singer Manuel Torre, who is not very well known in Spain, I believe—at least my friend Mercè, who has lived there her whole life & is an aficionado of flamenco (her parents opened the first flamenco tablao on the Costa Brava), didn't know him.

This despite a cold that laid me low & kept me from the Seido holiday party & kids' promotion, among other fun events I'd been planning (or considering) to go to.