If you haven’t had time to do your research, don’t guess, and definitely don’t - as I saw someone do last weekend - turn to Kevin Brockmeier in the middle of your introduction and say “Is The View From the Seventh Layer a novel?” I shudder. If you find yourself introducing someone like Michael Chabon, who’s written novels, short stories, essays, comic books, and children’s books, just avoid taxonomy and say he’s prolific.įind out what awards they’ve won, where they teach (currently), and what periodicals they write for. Do you think A History of Love is Nicole Krauss’s first book? Wrong! Look it up.
![how to introduce a quote without an author how to introduce a quote without an author](https://slideplayer.com/slide/11962138/68/images/30/Introduce+your+quote+quote+(citation)..jpg)
He’s written two novels, but this is his third story collection. Don’t say that Stay Awake is Dan Chaon’s fifth novel. Otherwise, ask the author when they arrive, before you hit the microphone with some garbled version of Eugenides.įind out what books they’ve written. If a definitive answer is elusive, ask their publicist, agent, or whoever set up the event with you.
![how to introduce a quote without an author how to introduce a quote without an author](https://s2.studylib.net/store/data/014531656_1-a9e919f3b2afa8033f2db86697ff9a51-768x994.png)
Look up the pronunciation of their name, even if you think you know it. A good author introduction shows the author that you’re excited to be a partner in promoting their work and that you value the role their career plays on the literary stage, all while being informative and – lord have mercy – brief. Because he flew across the country to speak for 50 minutes in your overheated auditorium and you have the internet. Should a beloved, Pulitzer Prize-winning author have to hear the president of Northwestern’s Jewish students’ society call him Michael Sha-BONE eight times in two minutes? No. The willingness and ability to carefully craft a good author introduction, in fact, was part of my job interview.Īuthor introductions, in my opinion, are about courtesy. I take this issue seriously because I was an author events coordinator at Brookline Booksmith for two years, and we took pride in our author introductions. I was recently at a literary festival where at least 10 of the roughly 15 author introductions I saw were painful to sit through. This is an extreme example, by far the worst I’ve ever seen, but author introduction crimes are rampant. Someone in the audience actually yelled out, “Don’t give it away!” This was advice she did not take. Worst of all, the book has a rather large twist in the second half, and she was explicitly hinting at what it is. Having already wasted close to 20 minutes of our time, she launched into a synopsis of the book, interspersed with her own impressions, leaving no secondary character or minor scene unnamed.
![how to introduce a quote without an author how to introduce a quote without an author](https://image2.slideserve.com/5144774/slide14-l.jpg)
And while we’re at it, the store actually has two different email newsletters that they send out, and she described them both in great detail. Then she spent 5 minutes talking about the plight of independent bookstores, and how they need money to do things like community book nights, and hey she’s got this newsletter sign-up sheet that she’s going to pass around. The co-owner of the bookstore started by reading through the store’s upcoming events flier, pausing to extemporize on each event. The worst author introduction I ever saw is making me cringe, right now, as I remember it.