Bestsellers & book festivals

Thanks to everyone who has already purchased a copy of my ebook of short stories, Kiss Shot, from Amazon. The book has – so far – peaked at #39 on the short story collection bestseller list. I am answering questions all day today on Facebook about the creation of Kiss Shot, ebook formatting and any other questions you might have, so stop by and check it out. If you haven't purchased your copy of Kiss Shot, it's only 99 cents in the Kindle Store (or 77 pence in the UK Kindle Store).

This past weekend was the Decatur Book Festival. I went to hear new US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey read from her collection Thrall on Friday night at the Schwartz Center at Emory University. Thrall is an interesting juxtaposition of confessional and ekphrastic poetry based on Casta paintings. On Saturday morning, I read with Michael Montlack, Jericho Brown, Jim Elledge, Cleo Creech and Dustin Brookshire from the Divining Divas anthology on the City Hall Stage. We had a surprisingly large crowd since we were scheduled opposite the Best American Poetry anthology reading. I also hosted an hour of poets on the Java Monkey stage and took part in an offsite reading from Divining Divas at Bound to Be Read Books that evening.

Judson Mitcham reads at Java Monkey

On Sunday, I introduced a reading and discussion on hybrid poetry by Laura Mullen and Megan Volpert, then attended the tribute to Lucille Clifton, a brilliant reading by Patricia Smith and Travis Denton and closed out the festival at Java Monkey for a reading by new Georgia Poet Laureate Judson Mitcham. He was amazing! Georgia is in good hands.

I have a second galley of my poetry collection Render to tackle today, so I'm about to grab my red pen and get to it. I hope everyone has a great Labor Day!