Last night’s event went…

Last night's event went well, the inaugural event in Lakshmi's Cardamom South Asian literary and cultural salon series. About fifteen people showed up to hear Lakshmi interview me and then do an audience Q&A. We had a good conversation about writing and sex and the community, and there was eating and drinking and chatting with interesting people. A lot of new people too, which is nice -- with as big a S. Asian population as Chicago has, you know there must just be tons of folks who like reading S. Asian lit whom we haven't met yet, but it's tricky figuring out how to find them, and how to get them to our events. Slowly, we progress. :-)

In Kriti news, we've added three new panelists to our roster: Neela Banerjee, Ligy Pullappully, and Moyez Vassanji. Happy to have them all, of course, but it's particularly nice to add Ligy as our first filmmaker, and Moyez as an established award-winning novelist. I'm happy with the roster again; we had a few cancellations, mostly due to an error I made in scheduling, so I was feeling very guilty about that. Now we're back up to what I consider a very solid group of panelists, yay! With any luck, it'll be one of those conventions where there are at least three things going on at any given time that you'd like to be at. I love those.

This morning, I've been revising, chugging along through chapter 8 (why, yes, still on chapter 8, why do you ask?). Should finish it this afternoon. Then drive up to Schaumburg, grade a few last student papers during office hours, teach tonight's class. We're starting to discuss gender issues, and in particular the issue of the mommy track tonight, so should be a fun, rousing discussion. This one tends to be emotional, I think; people (mostly women, but some men too) often get defensive about their choices. Let's see how much clear critical thinking I can get out of them today...