This Week's Boston Literary Scene

Lots going on this week in the world of Boston's literati. Let's get right down to it, shall we? 

Try To Remember

I'll start off with a big congratulatory shout out to fellow Grub Street writer Iris Gomez whose first novel Try To Remember is hot off the Grand Central Publishing presses.

"It's the story of spirited Gabriela de la Paz, a Colombian teenager struggling to forge her own identity in the changing cultural landscape of 1970s Miami, while keeping her increasingly volatile, mentally ill father out of legal trouble - in order to protect his green card status and save her family from exile in disgrace."

It's already garnering great reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Can't wait to crack it. Catch Iris on May 10th when she holds a discussion and book signing at the UMass Boston bookstore, May 12 at the Downtown Crossing Borders, and May 13 at Brookline Booksmith.

The Muse and the Marketplace

Hurry, time's running out! For what? For registering for Grub Street's 9th annual The Muse and the Marketplace writer's conference, which will be held this upcoming Saturday and Sunday, May 1st and 2nd. Registration ends this Tuesday, April 27th, at noon.

This year you can catch keynote speaker Chuck Palahniuk, along with guest authors Steve Almond, Donovan Campbell, Michael Downing, Hallie Ephron, Ethan Gilsdorf, Elizabeth Graver, Lauren Grodstein, Ann Hood, Victor Lavalle, Jennifer 8 Lee, Benjamin Percy, Michelle Seaton, Jessica Shattuck, Anita Shreve, Janna Malamud Smith, and Elizabeth Strout among many others.

Where else can you mingle with literary agents and editors from agencies and publishers large and small? No where else. Sign up to join the 500+ writers who will be in attendance. Register online, or give Grub Street a call at 617.695.0075.

Randy Susan Meyers

Be sure to catch Randy Susan Meyers this Thursday, April 29, at 7 PM over at Newtonville Books reading a selection from her novel The Murderer's Daughters. She'll be appearing along with Kelly O'Connor McNees, author of The Lost Summer Of Louisa May Alcott.

Tinkers

Belated congratulations to local rocker (drummer for Cold Water Flat) turned novelist, Paul Harding, who made more than good by winning this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Tinkers, which was published last year by independent Bellevue Literary Press with a an initial run of 3,500 copies. This week Perseus Books Group (parent company to the book's distributor, Consortium) is readying another 100,000 books for shipment.

Read Geoff Edgers' article in The Boston Globe about how Tinkers rose from collecting dust in the author's desk drawer to prize winning novel. It's a great underdog story. What writer doesn't like to hear that a tiny novel, with a small first printing and a 1,000 dollar advance, can climb into the heady clouds of year-end top ten lists and then ascend even farther to be the first novel released by a small press in thirty years to win the Pulitzer? Not this writer.

Here's Magnetic North Pole, the Cold Water Flat song Boston's WFNX played in the mid-'90s: