I love that the Long Island where I grew up -- which is to say, Nassau County -- has a literary festival of its own, the Gold Coast Book Fair, in Oyster Bay. And I'm very happy to be appearing there tomorrow, talking to @seth.wickersham and @demauricesmith about the power of NFL at noon and then to @alytadros and Stefan Merril Block about the ins and outs of writing memoirs at @1 :30. Also appearing tomorrow: @brucefeiler , @eden.scott and @dannyfunt . It's a great lineup, and it's going to be a beautiful day on the Island.
Please join us on June 13th at 6:30 PM with Vincent Coppola and Tom Junod to discuss their new memoirs.
Vincent Coppola is the author of five nonfiction books. A former Newsweek reporter, Coppola has written feature stories for Talk, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, Worth, and Atlanta magazines. Coppola’s story of his mother’s battle against cancer was awarded the William Allen White Gold Medal by the University of Kansas.
Tom Junod is senior writer for ESPN, where his work has won an Emmy and the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. He is a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, and a winner of the James Beard Award for essay writing. Previously he was a staff writer at GQ and Esquire. The film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood was based on his article in Esquire.
The event is located at E. Shaver Starland (The Gingerbread House) at 1921 Bull St. Free tickets are available as well as paid for tickets that include a signed copy of the book. Only books bought through E. Shaver or at the event will be signed. Beverages will be available for purchase at the bar in the Gingerbread House.
Space is limited, please RSVP: /e/coppola-junod-book-talk-tickets-1989553337590
#authorevent #savannahevents #GowanysCrossing #indiebookstore #siba
I wrote a book about my father. But I also wrote it for -- and about -- my mother.
His name was Lou. Her name was Fran. They were both born more than a century ago. They were both so beautiful -- the kind of people who don't just smile for the camera; they tell their stories to the camera, often against their will.
Here, for example, are four photos of Frances Brandshagen Junod. The first shows the beauty from Flatbush, her hair dyed -- permanently, it turns out -- "platinum blonde," like Jean Harlow's. The second shows her comically fending off her comically desperate husband. The third shows her on one side of my father, and his lover, Valerie Schocket, on the other. There are many photos like this in the family albums, and they all held me in thrall as a child, the secrets under the smiles.
So why does the fourth photo still pack a wallop for me so many years later? It's just a photo of me and my Mom splashing in the waves, after all -- no big deal, and blurry to boot. But here's the thing: Fran Junod couldn't swim. She was terrified of the water, the ocean in particular. But her smile in this photo is not just beautiful but also unforced, and reminds me of of what she was able to endure for the benefit of me, my brother and my sister -- her family. Her marriage was the ocean; her family the shore. And she rode the waves, somehow, for all of us.
Thanks Mom for keeping us -- and me -- together. And Happy Mother's Day. #MomsDay #FamilySecrets
Kicking off May with an event close to our hearts: a conversation with @tom_junod and @pamela_colloff at @firstlightbooks .
Tom walked us through his memoir, In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man, before opening things up for a thoughtful discussion afterward.
Thanks to everyone who came out and shared the evening with us. Keep an eye on the calendar to see what’s next.
📸: @alexparadox
One of the challenges of learning how to write a book was unlearning what decades of writing magazine stories had taught me, including the arsenal of tricks that had helped me meet countless deadlines. But when crunch time came, and I had six months to finish “In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man,” I dusted off a trick that had proven helpful in the past. And guess what? It worked. Honored that @literaryhub gave me a chance to write about the tricks of the trade — and about writing as an ongoing process of learning and unlearning — as part of their always valuable coverage of craft and process. Link in bio.
It was a wonderful event last night at @firstlightbooks in Austin, Tx — a packed house, support from @huckberry and great questions from the one and only @pamela_colloff . But there was something else happening, almost invisibly. In the front row sat a big guy with a pencil and a piece of paper. The pencil never stopped moving but every time I snuck a glance all I saw was a distribution of gray, as if he were trying to write with fog. But I stayed interested, because I know @wileyrossart — and he’s an artist down to his bones. The first time I met him, he did an impromptu and absolutely startling acoustic cover of “Gangsta’s Paradise.” This time, he waited until the end of the talk and handed me the piece of note paper. The gray swirl had cohered into a sketch of yours truly, and it felt like a magic trick. I guess it was. Thanks, Wiley. Thanks, @firstlightbooks , @huckberry and of course Pam.
@andsul and I are contemporaries, and we've both been in the interviewing business for a long time. But he seemed genuinely shocked by the revelations about my father in "In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man", and when we spoke for his Dishcast his continual sense of surprise led me to surprise myself with my own answers -- the mark of a really good interviewer. The interview is wonderful, and now available on The Weekly Dishcast on @substack . The link is in my bio.
Look who showed up at my talk with @seth.wickersham the other night at @wesrjjulia — why, it’s none other than the terrific @lisadtaddeo ! I can’t tell whether I’ve surprised her, or if she knows something I don’t. I’ve known Lisa since we both wrote for @esquire , so I vote for the latter. Thanks for showing up, Lisa, and look forward seeing you again.
@seth.wickersham is a great American journalist and a dear friend and colleague @espn . He is so closely aligned to the writing of “In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means To Be A Man” that he makes a cameo appearance in its pages. The book is a memoir but also a quest, and Seth went along for the ride, literally as well as metaphorically.
Tomorrow evening at 6PM, Seth and I will share a stage at @rjjulia , the esteemed bookstore in Middletown, Connecticut. We’ll talk about my book and his own fantastic “American Kings,” explore some of the differences between writing magazine stories and writing books, and, perhaps inevitably, land on a lengthy discussion about whether Bruce really is the Boss. It’ll be fun, and, if it works, it will be challenging and heartfelt. Join us if you can.
I’ve talked to a lot of people about both their families and their family secrets since taking “In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man” out in the road. But last night’s event @scuppernongbooks in Greensboro NC was even more personal than usual, first because I was sharing the stage with @bdickey81 , who heard many portions of the book as I was writing them, and second because many of those in the audience were members of my own family. Bronwen asked not just great questions but questions that came from a lifetime of thinking about writing and family; then my beloved niece @staceygarmstrong shared what it’s like to have a writer in the family, which is to say what it’s like to be part of a family that has been written *about.* It was intense, it was emotional and it was in the end validating of the hard work of talking — and writing — about family secrets. Thanks to @scuppernongbooks , Bronwen, Stacey, my brother-in-law Ronnie, @armike61 and, of course, all those Armstrongs.
It is well establishd that the first line of the first song of the first album by L.Z. is an "earworm" that people can't get out of their heads once they hear it. But "In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man" is also the title of my book, and some friends recently sent a video of the strange things that ensued when they tried to read the book and listen to the earworm at the very...same...time....
