IT Girl Goes to the Gala

Wanted to follow up with the details of the Poets & Writers “In Celebration of Writers” gala that I attended last night.  Because it’s not every day we attend a “gala”, now is it?

 Here’s what transpired, in a nutshell:

• Before Eileen asks, I wore a new black jacket with black pants and a tank top.  Kitt, who is my at work fashion consultant, approved of the outfit and I had to concur.  I felt very comfortable in it.  She came in a gorgeous purple velvet pantsuit.  Only Kitt can rock a purple velvet pantsuit.  Kitt is an IT Girl in my book any day.   
• As predicted, the Wiley folks did tend to congregate in a corner of the room.  Why?  Because this is POETS and WRITERS, a celebration, for the most part of fiction.  And Wiley doesn’t publish any fiction.  But we support P&W, so we were there giving out big Haiku Hi-fives. 
• That’s not to say that I didn’t recognize anyone.  On the elevator up to the ballroom, a woman with a baby got on, followed by a man.  I looked at her and said to myself, that’s Lili Taylor, I had no idea she was even pregnant much less a mom.  Other Wiley folks (hello Morgan!) doubted me, but thanks to Twitter, @treepusher was able to let me know that according to wikipedia, she was due to give birth to a baby girl in January of this year.  When I asked how old the girl was, she said she was 7 weeks, and couldn’t wait to make her debut at the dinner.  I congratulated them, and later saw her nursing her in the middle of the ballroom.  Way to go, sister.  Power to the leche people. 
• I also recognized Mary Higgens Clark and her daughter Carol at the cocktail hour.  The same cocktail hour where I ate my weight in little Reuben sandwiches.  Yum!
• Poets!  We had perhaps the coolest poet in the history of poets at our table.  Cornelius Eady - check out the hotlink, his hair is longer and even cooler now.   Let’s just say that if Sally Ride made physics cool for me, this guy could make poetry cool for anyone.  I ended up ordering one of his anthologies off Amazon because I thought he would be a good read for me and Little IT.  His wife was way cool too - she’s a SF/fantasy geek.  I felt so at home with her.
• Walking into the main room, I saw a guy who looked so familiar.  Morgan said, “That’s Imapeecee.”  After I made her repeat that 3 times, I realized it was the guy from the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC commercials.”  Did you know PC is an author?  Who knew that?
• Other authors that had me in fangirl mode were Erica Jong (I was in the ladies room with her - my mom would have fainted); Michael Cunningham (I mouthed I LOVE YOU as I walked by, but he probably 1. didn’t see it, and 2. doesn’t care about the love of a Hetero woman); Susan Isaacs (I used to read her when I first started working and someone left one of her books on the train); Andy Borowitz (he’s very funny) and some others I cannot remember.  But trust me, I was impressed. 
• Peter Straub, one of the nights honorees, is someone I have read previously.  OK, so I read him because he wrote with Stephen King, but still, give me that, will you?
• The food was a bit lame, but dessert was served in the hallway - o strange chocolate things coated in gold, we had a special night, didn’t we?

 All in all, it was fun.  And since the grown ups will probably end up going next year, I can say that my one visit to Poets & Writers was pretty cool.  I felt like a geeky little Cinderella at the ball.  What more could an IT Girl want?