Summer Author Adventures

It's summer!! Watermelon, pool parties, and for me, more frequent visits to the indie bookstore in downtown Austin, BookPeople. BookPeople is the biggest indie bookstore in Texas and it brings a ton of authors on tour for various events every year! 

Just this summer, I have seen three authors speak already. Lizzie Velasquez, Samantha Irby, and Roxane Gay. Here's what I felt: 

Lizzie Velasquez and Dare To Be Kind I hadn't actually purchased Lizzie's book, but I had heard about her from her TED talk and the title of her book was so promising, so I went and listened to her. She really is such a positive and bright person- despite times of her life when she felt almost no reason to carry on, she told herself recovery was possible with hard work and a focus on taking care of herself. She's brilliant and extremely funny, but you can just tell she shows absolute love and compassion to everyone. That's what really inspired me about her visit: the evident power that kindness had on her life and how she wanted to spread kindness. 

Samantha Irby and We Are Never Meeting In Real Life. I wasn't going to go to this event until I saw the incredible cover of this book on a shelf at BookPeople. Seriously, the cover is irresistible. Soon I found out Samantha Irby was irresistible as well. She was unbelievably hilarious and watching her in person talk about her book with the craziest jokes was AWESOME. From her, I really liked how unapologetic she was while talking about things that needed to be talked about, and how real she was about her life, in the funniest way.

Roxane Gay and Hunger  Confession time: I have actually never read any of Roxane Gay's books. I know, I've been living under a rock...But I am planning to read Bad Feminist with my book club real soon :) First of all, the entire second floor of BookPeople was completely packed. I stood in a small corner where I could barely see half of Roxane's face for two hours, but it was completely worth it. Roxane has so many important things to say, and does it so well. She knows when to be funny and when to be serious, and is incredibly brave about approaching uncomfortable topics. She tells it like it is. Her book Hunger is about her body over the course of her life, and it was so fascinating to watch her speak about assault and being fat in today's world, something that I never took the time to think about. 

I think I love author visits, even for authors whose books I haven't read, because they inspire me about a world of writers and where they draw inspiration from and how they write. It gives me purpose to keep writing myself, and reminds me of the importance of hearing voices. 

Have you seen any authors recently?