Went last night to the Sarah Bird reading in Austin to celebrate her naming as a Dobie Paisano fellow. Packed house at the ACE auditorium at UT Austin. The introduction for the event struck me as a bit odd - a Powerpoint was set up with slide images of Bird's book covers along side critical praise from various book reviewers which went on for several minutes, on a timer. The longer quotes were hard to catch before the transitions. And some books had multiple slides of praise. The soundtrack was instrumental flamenco music, which corresponded with Bird's book on flamenco. It was a very passive way to receive information, akin to going to a movie preview. The slide show was followed by a long verbal introduction by the director of Dobie Paisano which attempted to play on Bird's trademark humor.

The reading itself was strong. Bird opened with a piece that she wrote for Texas Monthly on getting rejected for the Paisano fellowship as a young emerging author, and how her perspective has changed now that she is receiving it at this point in her life. She followed that piece with a short story about a mother estranged from her teenage daughter and finished with a piece on high society, Texas style, replete with plastic surgery, haute couture, and McMansions.

A large audience came out to support Bird (though all of it mono-ethnic) - both readers and authors, TIL folk, former Paisano fellows, including several authors whose work we archive at the Wittliff - Gary Cartwright and Steve Harrigan.

Kort ended up at a back table with a bunch of Sarah's reading public who all had random ties to Asia - a woman who had taught in Taipei, a Navy Seal who was stationed in Japan and married a Japanese woman. They all had a strong sense of what can only be called "Austin pride" - proselytizing about how much they love Austin and all the things they love to do in Austin. I had to laugh when Kort told me about it later - our friends in Seattle loved Seattle, and we loved Seattle A LOT - but we never sat around and waxed long about it.