All hail the Red, White and … Pink!
It’s time again for “La Vie en Rose,” Contemporary Arts Forum’s annual Valentine’s exhibition, benefit auction and fashion show. The exhibition side — featuring works from a slew of Santa Barbara artists like Stephanie Dotson, Warren Schultheis, Zacarias Paul, Mary Heebner and more — is already up, but Saturday night’s gala event is the time to really show the love.
Things are heating up over here in Book Club Confidential land, in their own particular way. Why, I’ve got people with books in their hands beating down my door!
Author Robert P. Johnson has written me a nice long letter telling me that he owes his success in writing to our local book clubs. Last year, he says, 14 clubs took his recent book “Thirteen Moons: A Year in the Wilderness” as assigned reading, and those are the clubs he knows about. If not for the clubs, his book would have disappeared when his publisher Capra Press went out of business.
In fact, Mr. Johnson’s book was the last off the press of the 52-year-old company before it closed its doors. And that meant no promotion, not even enough money to send galley proofs to reviewers, he says.