Wisteria, Poetry and Literary Tidbits

The wisteria outside my door is just coming into bloom

April 1 is the start of National Poetry Month. Norton has put up a fun website where you can listed to poets like Robert Pinsky and Kim Addonizio others read their own poems as wall as other people’s poems.

A lot of Bay Area writers have new books coming out:

Joan Gelfand ‘s newest book of poetry, A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams, has just been released.

Catherine Brady’s latest collection of short stories, The Mechanics of Falling, has also just come out. Brady is a San Francisco resident and the stories are set largely in the city.

Jill Wolfson, a former Mercury News reporter who now lives in Santa Cruz, has a new YA novel. It's called Cold Hands, Warm Heart, and it tells the story of two teenage girls, one a fit gymnast who has a terrible accident, and the other a girl born with her heart on the wrong side. When the gymnast's heart is transplanted into the chest of the other girl, interesting things happen.

Brian Eule’s narrative nonfiction book. Match Day, was released in early March to coincide with the day that medical students learn which hospitals have chosen them to be residents. Eule went to Stanford and lives in Northern California.The New York Times wrote about his book and the process.

Michelle Richmond has written a wonderful essay about how both San Francisco and the South feel like home to her, and how those feelings show up in her fiction.

My book, Towers of Gold, is back on the San Francisco Chronicle best seller list at #6.

I have also started to blog at SFGate in a section called "City Brights." The San Francisco Chronicle has asked various members of the community -- artists, politicians, lawyers, sport enthusiasts, etc. to write blogs. (A case of a paper laying off its own reporters and getting content for free. More on that later.) My latest entry is about the grind and glory of the book tour.