Book Launches, Arugula & Rugelach
A Smart Move
Many people move to New York City to pursue their creative dreams. Me, I left my hometown and my editor’s job at Random House and moved West. I guess there’s a tradition for that too, though it usually involves men and hardtack.
As I put it in Getting Naked for Money:
It was hard for me to admit my literary ambitions to myself, much less to anybody else. If I was going to reinvent myself as a writer, I needed to find an inexpensive place to live, one where I had no history.
It also needed to be warm and sunny.
That city turned out to be Tucson, Arizona, where I will launch my memoir on Wednesday, November 2 from 5 to 7pm, at The Carriage House.
When Brooklyn Wasn’t Hip
Although Getting Naked for Money is primarily about the 25 years I spent in New York and Tucson as a guidebook editor and then freelance travel writer, most people in the Old Pueblo know me as a dining writer, especially as the contributing dining editor for Tucson Guide. That was far from inevitable. When I first arrived in town, in 1992, I was still a bit of a restaurant rube. Being born in Brooklyn did not confer instant sophistication on me.
The first time I met people who would have been termed foodies was in San Diego, where I was doing dissertation research in the early 1980s. I was nowhere near ready to join their ranks. Exhibit I: the dinner I attended at the home of one of the young academics in the literature department who had befriended me. When my host, Michael, announced that he had picked up arugula for the salad at a farmer’s market, I wondered if he’d been hitting the cooking sherry. Assuming Michael was Anglicizing the pronunciation of “a rugelach,” I was convinced he was trying to pass off the Jewish crescent cookie as a vegetable. (Not that I hadn’t had my own fantasies along those lines; I just couldn’t believe he thought he’d get away with it.)
Yes, grasshopper, once upon a time Brooklyn was not hipster central and iceberg lettuce was the only salad leaf most people knew.
A Book Launch with a Food Theme
So it is doubly gratifying that I will be giving a reading to a roomful of people, many of them friends and colleagues, and being introduced by Chef Janos Wilder, who is not only a James Beard-award winner but an integral part of the community, instrumental to the designation of Tucson as a UNESCO International City of Gastronomy.
There will be wine, soft drinks, chips and dips — and also some special-to-the-event food: arugula salad and rugelach, brought to you by the–coming soon!–aka Deli & Bakeshop. Read more about this exciting new venture by the creators of The Coronet and Agustin Kitchen + Cocktails here, my piece in Edible Baja Arizona.
I’ll be reading from Getting Naked for Money — including what it’s like to dine in the nude — at 6pm, but people will be milling, buying books (I hope), and generally schmoozing, coming and going. If you live in Tucson, you’re invited. If you don’t, good news: If all goes well, the intro and reading will be posted on YouTube. And you can always buy my book on Amazon.
That’s Wednesday, November 2, 5-7pm, at The Carriage House, 125 S. Arizona Avenue. Be there or be square (that reminds me, I still haven’t figured out how to use the Square).
Heaven help us.
Got my book, Edie (sure hope no one reads this!). Can’t wait to start reading and congratulations on your launch. Maybe I have to start reading tomorrow!?!
Ha, ha! No, you’re good and you can start today. I’m going to impose a deadline for Amazon reviews soon, strict taskmistress that I attempt to be.