Swag swag author bag!

So when I dropped by the hospitality suite on Sunday, THIN AIR staff person Tavia Palmer did two very important things:

1) She posed underneath the see-thru glass sink in the bathroom, which made me happy because it was blog-worthy.

2) She made me sign for my author bag. Which made me happy, and, as it turns out, is blog-worthy.

It should go without saying that I'm honoured to be reading at the festival this year. But I think I should say it.

And then roll around on the all the goodies in the author bag like I was Demi Moore and I just got a million dollars for sex. In paroxysms of desperate glee. Yes...



...except the author bag had a mug in in, which would probably work best in my cupboard with all the THIN AIR mugs I've accumulated from years of HOT AIR-ing for the fest.

After it's been washed, that is. And I'll probably use the pad for grocery lists, as I've used other THIN AIR note pads, as I prefer a full-sized notebook for my lit jottings. (Specifically, black with a spine and lined paper. NOT a moleskine.)

And the pen will rattle around the bottom of one of my bags. And be used for lit jottings AND for grocery lists.

I don't think the feeling-honoured will get used up the same way. Because I've been dreaming of reading at THIN AIR for a long time. And the festival has been very kind to me.

(The Poetry Bash! An Afternoon Book Chat! i.e. JUST what I would have chosen to do, if I'd been asked...)

Of course, I hope that kindness is because of the work and not because of this impertinent blog or the years of impertinent volunteering or because I work at Aqua impertinently. Because the (impertinent) work is what's most important.

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Ariel Gordon has two chapbooks to her credit, The navel gaze (Palimpsest Press) and Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999 (Rubicon Press), and this spring, Palimpsest published her first full-length poetry collection, Hump. She recently won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer at the Manitoba Book Awards. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.