VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
RIZZO: I was in a discussion with another author at an event on the book tour for Famous Baby. Surprisingly, it was a packed house, also a really attentive audience of mostly women. And wine was served, so most everyone had a glass of something in their hands. The moderator asked us about a favorite moment in our books. While the other author read a passage from her book, I panicked. I couldn’t think of a page or a paragraph. It was my turn. I started talking about the daughter, Abbie, comparing her mother’s hands with her own. Teenagers hate to be reminded of what they might have inherited from a parent, but in the book it suddenly dawns on Abbie that she has her mother’s hands, while her mother, Ruth, sitting in the passenger seat, wonders at what age she’ll be too old to rest her feet on the dashboard any more. A woman in the front row dropped her wine glass and it shattered on the concrete floor. I stopped, and she said, sniffling, “Oh! I’m sorry, but you made me cry and I dropped my glass and I can’t find a tissue.” “I’m glad,” I muttered. And I felt very calm while someone cleaned up the broken glass.
Karen Rizzo has spent a number of years writing non-fiction, mostly about her family and friends. The recipient of a MAGGIE Award for Best Essay in a West Coast Magazine, her stories and essays have been appeared on NPR and in the Los Angeles Times, Living Fit, Salon, Beatrice, Fresh Yarn and VIVmag as well as the anthology Life’s A Stitch: The Best of Contemporary Women’s Humor. She’s the author of THINGS TO BRING, SH#!T TO DO… , a collection of essays based on twenty years of personal lists, and a Book Sense/IndieBound pick for Best of The Month. Famous Baby, published by Prospect Park Books, is Karen’s debut novel. Karen lives with her husband, actor Jim Macdonald, and their two children in Highland Park.
Come see Karen break things at Book Show in Frogtown on Friday, August 8 at 7:30pm.