A friend expressed curiosity about what my responsibilities are on this sort of trip, so I thought I’d explain a bit more. The work thing I do most on a trip like this is press interviews. This can range from my press conference in Bologna a few years ago (to which a knight in shining armor accompanied me, then stood guard; Italy, I love you) to, more often, me in a room with a journalist (and possibly someone from my publisher, who may be serving as translator). The day might involve quite a few such interviews, with newspapers, magazines, online journals. There might be a picture portion, too, where, for example, I stand on the streets of Barcelona reading my own book in Catalan while someone takes pictures (which is of course very realistic, because I do that sort of thing a lot ^_^).
I also have some appearance events that aren’t public. Yesterday I spoke to about 400 youth in Kristianstad, for example.
Here are photos from Kristianstad! I’m posting this on an infuriating iPad (not mine), so here’s hoping this isn’t a mess. The first few are from the beautiful church, where it was very hard to capture the scale…
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a candle with the altar in the background |
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Can you see the little face on the organ pipe? |
In the streets, people were selling used books in association with the book festival.
The Kristianstad Library has a book bus!
Now I’m in Copenhagen, wondering why no one’s ever told me how stunning and fun Copenhagen is. More soon on that.