Book tour takes
W&L professor
to West Coast
Feb. 17, 2010
For many Washington and Lee students and staff, the annual "Washington" or "Feb. Break" is a welcomed holiday from the usual university schedule. It's a vacation of sorts, even if it is spent preparing for or grading midterms.
After a day of classes on Thursday, Jasmin Darznik, a professor of English at W&L, caught a plane bound for Los Angeles. And though she plans to spend eleven days on the West Coast, Darznik will hardly be relaxing. She will instead spend her break promoting her first book, The Good Daughter, published last month.
Darznik's schedule will take her to a different California city each day, reading for university and bookstore audiences alike.
Her tour has been eight months in the making and begins on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, where she received her undergraduate degree. She received her doctorate at Princeton University.
This and a reading at Princeton in early March are “big sentimental stops,” said Darznik.
“I will be reconnecting with some of my beloved professors,” she said, “and also my college friends, many of whom I have not seen for almost 15 years.”
U.C. Irvine, Mt. Pleasant High School, San Jose State University and U.C. Berkeley are among the other campuses Darznik will be visiting throughout the rest of her tour.
Academic settings are great for readings, said Darznik. “You can presume a certain amount of knowledge on the attendees’ part.”
Unfortunately, said Darznik, students rarely show up to these events.
But more than half of the stops on Darznik’s tour are at bookstores, a setting Darznik said she prefers to college lecture halls.
“That's where you meet your real readers,” she said. “The questions are more personal, I'd say, and I feel an intimacy with the audience.”
On Feb. 24, Darznik will be reading for a somewhat familiar crowd at a launch party hosted by Book Passage, Corte Madera, Calif.
Darznik said she spent her teenage years “between the stacks” of Book Passage, listening to authors like Annie Lamott, Isabel Allende and Amy Tan—local icons in her hometown of Marin, Calif. Darznik also began her work on The Good Daughter at a writing workshop held there.
After she received her book contract, Darznik said she holed herself up in Book Passage for hundreds of hours, writing and rewriting the memoir.
“It's an extraordinary feeling to return home with this book in hand,” she said. “It’s personal. Emotional.”
Darznik said she has enjoyed the traveling so far, and she acknowledged that the opportunity to tour is once-in-a-lifetime.
Still, Darznik said, “I am already feeling a bit bored with hearing myself talk and anxious to get back to writing.” So many hours in cars and on planes can be exhausting, she said.
With the paperback release of her book coming this November, she said she is trying hard to keep up her energy.
“Someday I may actually start to get paid for this,” said Darznik. “But for now, I am just lucky for the chance to take my story to the streets.”
For more detailed information about the stops on Jasmin Darznik's tour, visit www.jasmindarznik.com.
________________________________
Michael McGuire is journalism student at Washington and Lee University. You may read more of his writing by visitng his blog.
| Regional events calendar |
Local government websites:
|
Produced by Washington and Lee digital journalism students.
