Santa Monica Public Library Photos

I was excited that I got to be a part of the Santa Monica City-wide Read this year. Although the official selection was my friend Dolen Perkin-Valdez's excellent book Wench, the library featured The Girl Who Fell From the Sky as well as Kathryn Stockett's The Help as secondary reads--books that dealt with similar issues. I read at the library on a rainy Wednesday night a couple of weeks ago to a warm and lovely audience. The podium was so tall that I had to stand on three volumes of an encyclopedia (I think it was w, x, and y). Best of all I met another Afro-Viking--according to my unofficial Census count thus far, we now number a total of 9 who reside in the U.S.