Authors and books gather in Riverton

Thirty-five writers from around the state attended the Wyoming Author Showcase last Friday at the Central Wyoming College Library in Riverton.

My table was located between children's writer (and retired teacher) Gene Gagliano from Buffalo and essayist Jeffe Kennedy from Laramie. I sold and signed a few books, talked to a lot of interesting people. The library staff spread the word widely about the event. A retired librarian from Maryland, who now lives in Riverton and volunteers at the library, bought a copy of "Deep West: A Literary Tour of Wyoming." That's the 2003 anthology of 19 Wyoming writers and poets that I co-edited. I sold a few copies of my collection of short stories, "The Weight of a Body." Ann Hicks, co-owner of Meadowlark Books on Main Street in Riverton, urged me to come by the next morning and she would buy copies of both books.

So I did. Nice store, with new and used books. A fine selection of mysteries, and a burgeoning supply of old fiction titles. I picked up "The Shrine at Altimira," a 1992 novel by John L'Heureux. He's a fantastic short story writer but I'd never read one of his novels. It's about time. Also bought an old Riverton Public Library copy of "The Plague" by Albert Camus. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 for "his important literary production, with which clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times." We could use some of that "clear-sighted earnestness" now. Camus was one of the most active writers of the French resistance during World War II, and editor of the underground anti-Nazi and anti-Vichy newspaper, Combat. The third book I bought, "An Old-fashioned Girl" by Louisa May Alcott, is destined for my old-book shelf, on which I place books that I probably won't read but they look cool because they have old covers. Books as interior decorating. My other books are for reading, and giving to my daughter to open her eyes to the world.