Catch and Release
Discover more from It's All Still True by Maggie Ginsberg
Catch and Release
Plus Book Club Cafe, library love and awards season.
Forgive me, indulge me, this blurry photo. I took it with shaking hands just moments after climbing the stage to address 150 or so librarians from all across Wisconsin at their annual spring conference in Oshkosh last week. I don’t always remember to take photos at my events these past seven months, and when I do they’re rarely from my vantage point. This one right here, despite its terrible quality, captures an emotion my words still can’t. And maybe it turned out exactly as it should have. I don’t yet have language for this surreal, terrifying, gratifying time, so this smudgy delirious thrill-y blurfest will have to do.
Oh, libraries. They’ve been so good to me, and I’m getting such an amazing tour (Lake Geneva and Fort Atkinson just last week, both on gorgeous display on my Instagram feed). This month I’m headed to the Spring Green Community Library on May 18 (the night after I Zoom in to Arcadia Book Club’s May 17 meeting to discuss Still True)—but, before that, it’s back to Central Library for something really thrilling: the 23rd annual Book Club Cafe on May 16.
I’m honored to be the featured speaker for this evening fundraiser put on by the Friends of the Madison Public Library. Tickets are still available for the event—back after a three-year hiatus, due to the pandemic—and, unbelievably, I’m joining a tradition of past speakers that include Chloe Benjamin, Jane Hamilton, Lucy Tan, Sara Gruen, Elizabeth Berg, Dean Bakopoulos, Margaret George, Jacquelyn Mitchard and Margaret Drabble. I’m even more thrilled that the targeted audience is book club members, because that was the one thing I knew when I sat down to write Still True: I wanted to write a book club book. The kind of book that raised questions you wanted to talk about with friends. If that’s you, I hope you’ll join us. (Act fast, they’re hoping to give the pastry caterer a head count by Tuesday.)
Speaking of book clubs, I’ve been visiting quite a few and I love hearing other people’s takes on themes on a book I thought I knew inside out, because it makes me feel like a reader and not just the author. It underpins my belief that these characters are real people out there in a real town somewhere and I’m still getting to know them, even today. I understand now that the urge to revise a manuscript indefinitely isn’t so much about perfectionism as it is this sense that stories are living things. We capture and mount them not like some taxidermied creatures, but like slippery shimmering fish we must catch and release. I didn’t know that before. I’m starting to know it now, thanks to my fellow readers.
Finally, tremendous gratitude to Dragonfly Books in Decorah, Iowa, who not only hosted me for a lovely reading, they put me up in a guest apartment so I could take some time to write and explore their Driftless community, which was absolutely wonderful. (After the event itself, it finally happened—a couple introduced themselves as married a long time but living separately in the same town, just like Jack and Lib. Made my entire week.) If you get the chance to go to Decorah, take it. Stop by the bookstore and tell them I say hello.
Award Season
Still gobsmacked by some heady news I’ve received this month. Three things, actually.
Still True was named the single honorable mention selection for the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award. The Wisconsin Writing Awards are the longest-running literary awards in the state, judged by writers outside the state. There will be a public reading and reception at Arts + Literature Laboratory on May 20 at 6pm.
Still True is one of three finalists for the 33rd annual Midwest Book Awards in the Literary/Contemporary/Historical Fiction category. The Midwest Book Awards are presented by MiPA, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting independent publishers in the Midwest. This year, MiPA received 303 entries, made up of 227 unique titles in a range of genres from 122 independent publishers from each state in MiPA’s 12-state region. The gold winner will be announced at a Minneapolis gala in June.
Still True is one of three finalists for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association 2023 STAR Award for Outstanding Debut. Winner will be announced at the WFWA conference in September, held this year in Chicago.
Upcoming events & news
You can always follow along on my website, MaggieGinsberg.com.