{"id":28560,"date":"2018-04-30T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T07:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=28560"},"modified":"2018-04-30T00:01:27","modified_gmt":"2018-04-30T07:01:27","slug":"library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/library\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Noise in the Library — An Author’s Gala in Walnut Creek"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Writers<\/a>
Bumped into at the library party: Lisa Wrenn, my old editor at the Oakland Tribune when our kids were little and I was writing a weekly column for our paper. Barbara Newhall photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

I like a party. No two ways about it. I love to talk. And I love to eat and drink, especially when the food and company are as delicious as those on offer Saturday night at the annual Walnut Creek Library Foundation’s Authors Gala, held in the beautiful Walnut Creek Library. Yes,\u00a0in the library<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was fun bumping into people I know and don’t know. Lisa Wrenn was there — she was my editor at the Oakland Tribune when I was writing the columns<\/a> about life with little kids, husband, house and commute. Many of those columns are republished, with permission, on this website.<\/p>\n

Lisa was a writer’s dream of an editor. I’d come to work on a Monday morning with a sliver of<\/p>\n

\"Authors<\/a>
Memoirists meet: That’s me striking up a conversation with Joyce Maynard in the midst of a noisy library crowd Saturday night. Photo by Jon Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

an idea for that week’s column. I’d try my idea out on Lisa, who also had small children. If Lisa laughed, I knew my idea was good to go.<\/p>\n

\"Author<\/a>
Don Lattin. Photo by Jon Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Also at the library party Saturday night: Don Lattin, who was the religion reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle for years and years and the author<\/a>, most recently, of\u00a0 “Changing Our Minds:\u00a0<\/span>Psychedelic Sacraments and\u00a0the New Psychotherapy.” Don wrote the foreword to my book “Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith.” It’s an insightful read even if you don’t get any further than that into my book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Somebody I didn’t know till Saturday night is Robert Aquinas McNally. We shared an author’s table at the library gala. His latest book is “The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America’s Gilded Age.” I’m going to study it and get some ideas on how to write historical narrative. (I’m hoping to write about my three-times great-grandmother who had the enigmatic — Dutch? Indonesian? — name: Bandenah.)<\/p>\n

\"Author<\/a>
Robert Aquinas McNally. Photo by Jon Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bob is also a prizewinning poet. Find out for yourself at this YouTube video recorded<\/a> at the Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n

I also had a chance to get myself photographed with the famous memoirist<\/a> Joyce Maynard, who lives in the East Bay, like so many of the writers partying with impunity at the library on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

Jon, the thriller-writer at our house, scored a couple of writing tips from Joyce before he snapped the photo.<\/p>\n

I always get super nervous before these author\u00a0 events. But I always wind up having fun. It’s a mystery.<\/p>\n

More author events at “How Three World War II POWs Saved Each Other’s Lives.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also, “I Landed a Bit Part in a Real Movie. Thank You, Armistead Maupin.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Writers<\/a><\/p>\n

I like a party. No two ways about it. So when I was invited to eat, drink and chatter away in a library — the Walnut Creek Library — I said yes. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[2079,1110,1419,2082,2090,2091,2083],"class_list":["post-28560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing-reading","tag-authors-gala","tag-don-lattin","tag-events","tag-joyce-maynard","tag-lisa-wrenn","tag-robert-aquinas-mcnally","tag-walnut-creek-library-foundation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}