Photos from Knowing Pains reading at Great Good Place for Books

Last Friday night - and even though our event started just minutes after the presidential debate ended - we had a standing room only crowd at Great Good Place for Books in Montclair, for "Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex and Work in our 40s." It was a great way to kick off what will likely be three months of public readings of the book, a fundraiser for Breast Cancer Action (www.bca.org.)

The event definitely pulled in a home-town crowd; if I'd blacked out and woken up there, my first reaction would have been to think I was at our school PTA meeting. It was so nice to see friends from my old neighborhood who made the trek through the Caldecott Tunnel to come out in support too.

I wasn't a bit nervous about reading "Fanning the Flames of Youth" which did, after all, have its first appearance in a writing group I was in. I've read it aloud plenty of times. But sitting in the same chair at GGP in which I've watched so many of my own favorite authors sit had a sobering effect, and I found myself seized with massive dry mouth...until I got to the first laugh line. After that I relaxed and had a blast. We sold out of the books completely and had audience members ordering additional copies - great to see at a truly beloved neighborhood bookstore where they're going to need all the local support they can get during the tough economic times ahead.

Thanks to Debbie Bonzell, soon to be known as Knowing Pains' personal paparazzo, for the photos.

























Liz Becker, me, Molly Rosen signing after the reading