So I’m on my way to the Norfolk Literary Festival in Norfolk, Nebraska.  The flight here from Chicago was nice and easy.  Now I’m waiting for the plane to Omaha.

My brother in law drove me to the Louisville airport and told me that I should check out Autohenge in Omaha.  Apparently somebody recreated Stonehenge, um, made out of old cars.  It sounds like something I would definitely love to see, but probably won’t have time.

Tomorrow I’ll be doing a writing workshop with kids and then talking with librarians and teachers about my book That Book Woman.

Speaking of Book Woman, I just received the latest foreign edition in Japanese!  It is so incredibly cool to see an Appalachian story translated into Japanese.  (Not that I can read it, but it looks terrific.)  Actually since David Small was inspired by Japanese drawing for his work on That Book Woman, it actually looks pretty natural.  My mom even asked me if they had redrawn the pictures because it looks like a totally different book in a way, like an original  Japanese publication.

Here’s the cover:

Back to the trip.  I unfortunately do not own a small digital camera.  (The one we own is massive, looks like a 35 mm camera from yesteryear.)  And I don’t have something as up to date as an Iphone.  So I’m hoping some of the folks in Norfolk will take pix and email to me so I can post.   In any case, I will keep ya’ll posted on my travels.  I’m sure it’ll be fun, even if I don’t get to see Autohenge. 🙂

I’ve been reading a lot of poetry since my last post.  Often poetry is what I go to when feeling contemplative about life and loss.  I guess what I like about reading poetry is that moment of recognition, when all the emotions and images come together and suddenly everything is illuminated.  I like how poets find the profound in the mundane, the sublime in the everyday.

James Still is one of my favorite writers.  He was a novelist, a short story writer, a poet.  He was a Kentuckian.  In fact he was the first Kentucky Poet Laureate.  I never got to meet James Still.   But his work has had a huge influence on my own writing.  He had a pitch perfect ear for how real people talk — especially people living in eastern Kentucky.  His stories, often about boys growing wild on the mountainside or getting into trouble in coal towns, seem simple, but each one is so finely layered with meaning and truth, each one is a masterpiece.

I was recently reading through The New and Collected Poems by James Still, which was published in 2001, and came upon a poem that really spoke to me as a writer about how truly tenuous the act of writing can be, how fragile the moment of creation.

Visitor

There was a poem here yesterday,

But not now.

It sat for many an hour

Unwelcomed, unnoticed.

It went away for lack

Of ears to hear,

Eyes to see,

Hearts to open.

The poem went away

and did not look back.

I think the line I love the most is:  hearts to open.  Being a writer, or any kind of artist, means having to open yourself up.  To possibilities, to risks, to hope, to failure.

I’m going to be reading and talking about Dream of Night at the Boyle County Public Library on Thursday, May 20th at 7 pm.  This event will be in the Teen Room — yes, there is a Teen Room! (That’s the question everyone asks when I tell them where it is.)  No, there are no Teen Books in the Teen Room yet, but we (on the library board) are working on that.  There is a Teen Room, though, and it is very, very cool.  It is right at the top of the main stairs.  It looks like a cafe, except without any food.  There will be food there Thursday night.  Free pizza!  (Although Karl tells us it would be best to eat the pizza in the children’s library rather than the actual Teen Room :))  Wherever we actually eat the pizza, please come  and check out the book and the new Teen nook in Danville.  Books will be available through Centre College Bookstore for purchase and signing by yours truly.

I’ve been coming to the Danville-Boyle County Library since my mom carried me there on her hip.  I may have learned to read there.  I know I did lots of research on countless school reports over the years.  When I moved back to Danville, it definitely was a highlight of my homecoming.

The library had gotten bigger, but it still looked and felt the same.  Those in charge of expanding it over the years had kept the original lovely old building, kept much of the charm, just added more rooms of books.  Another massive expansion was undertaken a few years ago, and finally after much anticipation, the new library opened in January.  Again, the powers that be had the wisdom to keep the integrity of the place, keep the original parts, so when you walk into the new library, you still have a powerful sense of the old.  I can still sit in the room where I poured over encyclopedias as a kid (can you imagine kids going to the library to look at an encyclopedia today?) but I can also walk into a huge new room of fiction and another gigantic nonfiction room, I can sit in a room with a giant map or a giant globe, I can bring my kids to an enormous new kids space with dinosaur bones hanging from the ceiling and more computers than they could ever use, I can stand on the glassed in second floor and gaze at a glass sculpture by a world-renowned glass artist, I can sit in the garden where my name and my husband’s name and my kids’ names are etched forever in one of the bricks for future Henson-Ungs to see.  Danville isn’t a very big town, but we have an amazing library.  How lucky is that?