tiptree bio – reading at A Different Light

Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

The Tiptree biography reading and booksigning at A Different Light in the Castro blew me away. Can’t wait to read the book. The bits of it I’ve heard are dreamy. Julie Phillips is a fantastic writer & it’s a pleasure to hear her read aloud and answer questions on the fly.

On the drive up Highway 101 to San Francisco, I heard the most beautiful horn solo on KPOO, 89.5 FM, by Charles P. Miller, a musician from New Orleans. I don’t know the title or the album. The notes floated up and out my car window in one of those glorious moments of feeling like you’re in your very own movie with the perfect soundtrack. Then, walking around in the Castro was even more so – cute gay boy couples walking around, guys standing outside bars, chatty and appreciative of my hair, rainbow flags flying everywhere, young guys with thick horn-rimmed hipster glasses walking while texting on their phones, neurotic & intense.

The bookstore was hopping – Ariel and Molly were there – Debbie Notkin, Ellen Klages – and Jill Roberts from Tachyon Publications, and Steven Schwartz, and a fabulous person named Jeanine Warnod who told me about a Russian woman living in Paris in I believe the 1910s, who wrote novels and poetry and painted under men’s names. She wrote it down for me: the Baronne d’Oettengen; her pseudonyms were Roch Grey, Leonard Pieux, and Francois Angiboult. D’Oetttengen hung out with Apollonaire and Picasso… and was a respected writer and artist… but no one knows about her. You see what fascinating things you learn if you talk deeply with random unknown somewhat elderly 4 foot high women with very thick accents who wear attractive suits at literary readings while you avoid the crush around the newly (and justly) famous author. I hope that Jeanine writes the book on Helene d’Oettengen! If you want the most interesting conversation in the room then go talk to the old ladies. It is my rule in life. No one else is talking with them, and surely they know something fascinating: therefore, good conversations uninterrupted. I am sorry if Jeanine does not want to be called an old lady… Someday I aspire to be one… that is all…

Meanwhile, Julie’s sweet husband, who is a Dutch translator, herded the kids, who behaved like tiny blond angels during the reading. The gathered flowering of feminist science fiction nerds looked upon them and beamed its approval.

I bought a miniature mirrored rainbow disco ball at the bookstore, to hang in my car.

A bunch of us had dinner at Firewood, a medium-okay pizza-ish restaurant up 18th a couple of blocks. I had a gigantic, okay Caesar salad. 10 of us fit in a booth. Steven and I talked about manifestos and then the rest of us went off on how to moderate panels at science fiction conventions, our favorite science fiction stories from childhood, funny things we have explained to our parents about sex, literary and publishing gossip, and other things too scandalous and important to mention. Wish you’d been there.