On Meeting Literary Heroes (Part 1)

While I was an undergraduate, I was a teaching assistant for a class called "Quests and Journeys."  In that class, we read a collection of stories by Joyce Carol Oates called Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?  I loved it.  What was particularly exciting was that the author herself was coming to campus to do a reading and talk, and sign books.  I went up to her at the end of the talk with my book in hand, which she graciously signed. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: I taught this book this semester! It was great!
Oates: You look way too young to be teaching.

Sigh.  But the campus paper's photographer was there, so I have this documentation:

I guess I *do* look a little young there.  But still.  I was disappointed.

So my next author encounter was with Margaret Atwood.  I was working an awful summer job at a glass factory (there's a longer version of that story, for another post) and a friend let me know that she was going to be reading at a Borders bookstore about an hour from my house.  I had just pulled a full shift and was exhausted, but I had to go.  I drove all the way there and arrived in time to hear the reading (she was terrific and funny), and then go up and get my book signed.  Here's how that exchange went:

Me [barely able to speak, clutching my book]: Will you sign my book?
Atwood: Yes of course. [and she signed my prized hardcover copy of Cat's Eye]

Many years later, I wrote an article about a "witch" named Mary Webster.  This Mary Webster was in fact an ancestor of Margaret Atwood, and Atwood wrote a poem about her called "Half-Hanged Mary."  In writing my article, I really wanted to include some of her poem.  I managed to do this by getting permissions from her publisher (for which we had to pay).  In the process of doing that, I had some correspondence with Atwood's assistant, and I asked if I might send Atwood herself a copy of the article.  She expressed interest, and while I tried not to get too excited, I was thinking, way down deep in the corner of my heart, that maybe, just maybe, Margaret Atwood would read something that I had written.  A few months later, I received this in my mailbox:

This is likely the most exciting thing, ever, to happen to me, writing-wise.  And possibly otherwise, too.  Margaret Atwood read something I wrote.  In fact she "very much enjoyed reading it."  I'm still kind of speechless about that.

About a year after I received the note, I went to another of Atwood's readings, and again got her to sign a book.  I wrote about that in another post here.

So why am I bringing all this up now?

Well, this Friday, something's happening that's Kind of a Big Deal.

Stephen King is coming to campus.  I am taking my class (the one on the Gothic novel) to see him in a small afternoon talk for students, and I am going to his big arena lecture in the evening.  But it appears that sometime in between those two events, I am likely going to be at a small-ish reception where I will likely (I can barely type this) meet Stephen King.

If only I could tell my thirteen-year-old self this.  Dear Thirteen Year Old Self: I know you just received about a dozen Stephen King books for Christmas this year, and that you literally spent all of Christmas Day, 1987, reading Misery.  Just wait til 2012.

Stay tuned for updates, photos, etc.