dinner with writers

[storyrainthejournal]

My lovely cousin and her lovely mate took me to dinner at La Traviata last night, where we dined with several other writers, teachers and directors of writing and poetry programs, all of them. I knew the work of one, Jesse Lee Kercheval, because we had published it when I was an editorial assistant at American Short Fiction, and one story in particular, "Earth," that I had always loved. She was delightful; her husband makes silent films using old, original silent film making equipment, and teaches that to film students. One of the others is a poet and keeps a very surreal-political blog for his cat, Shimmy. Both of these academian writers evinced some love for science fiction and we had some good discussion of the genre issue.

And, yes, the food was brilliant, but I'll mention only one thing, pomegranate shaved ice granita for dessert.