I’m late to the party of the year in review. 2024? So long ago in the ongoing and brand new chaos of 2025. (Must go on. Can’t go on. Will go on. And so on.)
To start with the future
A reading is coming up — to be livestreamed and in person at Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum on March 18 — please join us if you can.
And in April, two new short pieces will appear in The Fourth River.
Looking back on 2024
Some photos and appreciations for the wonderful writers who joined me to celebrate the publication of The Gunman and the Carnival.
At Bottom Feeder Books, for the February launch, Nancy Krygowski and Jane McCafferty —
Despite the discouraging is-it-still-winter? weather, I shared a delightful and unexpectedly intimate March reading with the brilliant Lynn Emanuel and James Tadd Adcox at White Whale Bookstore —
And at Riverstone Bookstore in April, with Mike Good and Sherrie Flick.
When summer (finally) came, Varun Ravindran, Barbara Edelman, and Sheila Squillante joined me for a reading and discussion at the Community Library of Castle Shannon.
Thank you all again for joining me for so many varied and beautiful events in Pittsburgh.
And then there was Reno …
… for the 2024 Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl, where Anthony Doerr gave a rousing keynote speech …
… and after a lovely fiction panel with Baobab Press publisher Christine Kelly and writer Joan Maki, celebrating her debut novel Undercurrents, I shared a signing table with my old friend from Iowa City and points west, Doug Unger.
Finally in December
I was happy to join the second livestreamed reading from Beacon Radiant, the annual great weather for MEDIA anthology, published in July, which included my short “Swimming Home.” Reading with me were Taneesh Kaur, David Haynes, Tobey Hiller, Rebecca Macijeski, Karen Neuberg, Adrian Potter, and Ed Go.
And here we are, in winter again …
But one more 2024 event I almost left out — a joyful reading at Cozy Corner Bookstore on a snowy night in January, with James Tadd Adcox, H. Thao Nguyen, and Tyler Crumrine, celebrating Tadd’s spectacular Denmark: Variations.
And even though 2025’s latest snow is gone, and this image is of last year’s…
… I know we will soon know snow again.
Keep warm, sleep well, wake up, read books.
Dear Catherine--thank you for this literary tour through what in other ways was a tough, pretty bleak year. These events are so various and alive--full of community. It is a very moving account of being alive and warm when the world feels frozen over.🥶. Warm love, Lynn