Salvage Heart

Author/Editor/Teacher/(celeb spouse...shhhh) Vendela Vida stopped at Powell's Books in downtown Portland last night for a reading from her new novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. Vida previously appeared at the 2006 Wordstock Festival in April, and at Powell's on an earlier tour with Julie Orringer.

A nice-sized crowd of 75 or so turned out to hear the Believer editor read, which she obligingly did. Vida appears slightly embarrassed by the whole aspect of author-reading, but forges onward.

A couple of unchecked quotes (I didn't buy a copy of the book...I'm not even buying beer and coffee until I get paid a week and a half from now)....

A nice simile:
"...familiar yet amiss, like the first time you ride in the back sea of your own car."

A Lexington, KY shout-out (the narrator discovers her name in her father's address book, along with four addresses, none of which are crossed out, leading her to consider the possibility of parallel lives:
"In my Kentucky life, would by father still be dead?"

Vida talked about writing, and reading, and revising.
Reviews? She doesn't read them, though she relies on friends to relay the good news and support from positive write-ups (supposing that someone might have mentioned this one). What if, she said, the review claimed to like all aspects of her book, except that it should have been set on Mars? Then she might be inclined to take such advice. So as long as the vision is pure, reinforcing it with positive notes from reviews (passed along by second parties) should be fine.
Writing? At the end of the day, after teaching and editing and mothering the baby, after 9 p.m. when she's good and mad about not having written all day, at which time she manages between 500-1000 words. Northern Lights appears in sections about that length, though she attributed format to attempting to capture the Lapland geography and feeling (which dense blocks of text would not do...).
Revising? Much easier after 40 pages than 300. At least let someone take a look. She told the story of her first novel, And Now You Can Go, which took three years and hundreds of pages, after which time she threw most of it out after getting (deservedly) poor feedback from friends.

Counted about 75 in the audience (Powell's organizers claimed 100; note to self: do my own counting). Looked like many purchased books, which Vida spent time signing in longhand and at some length.

And though she may not read the reviews, the reviewers read her.
New York Times (good one)
Oregonian (Vendela, do not read this one...actually, no link available)
Washington Post (cold as ice)
Portland Tribune (just a feature)
And so on.