Lux Lotus

Art Crush: Yuko Torihara

Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry. -- Jack Kerouac
Make voyages! Attempt them... there's nothing else. --Tennessee Williams

I met Yuko Torihara when I ran into her walking down my street with our mutual friend Tunji Dada. She and I exchanged info after we chatted and that's how I discovered her exquisite portfolio. I love this photo for the special something in it that evokes exactly how I feel when I fantasize* about possibilities for my summer vacation, as yet undefined.

*Easy to do when your first two consecutive free evenings don't occur until late June, and are likely to fill-in by then anyway. I still have myriad engagements and projects to attend to before this week is through, however, so I'll be back after the weekend. Cheerio, doves!

Image: Suitcase (Tokyo, 2005).

Windowlicker

I was all set to write a post on "slow food" as my preferred outlook earlier this evening and then, naturally, shoved a Bounty in my mouth as quickly as I could. Anyway, as far as I can tell I'm all for "slow everything" these days. In that vein, I'd like to start a collection of bangle bracelets... slowly. Maybe have three or four truly lovely ones in hand by the time I'm forty (I turn twenty-nine next week)?

[Ippolita Skinny Bangle, $695 each at Neiman Marcus]

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.

Another Chicago

While I was waiting in line in the post office on Doyers Street (fun fact: also known as "The Bloody Angle"), I thought I might kill some time by checking via Blackberry to see if Dana had posted anything to Young Manhattanite about our trip. She did. I spent the next fifteen minutes hunched over, laughing, as tears streamed down my face. After I collected myself, a man leaned across the rope separating the two of us in our various sections of the Mobius Strip-like line and said only, "This is a precious moment of happiness in the post office." And it was.

The Smart Set +

The Smart Set for this week in New York is up at MaudNewton.com.

Tonight in Brooklyn: please join us for Other Means! Janice Erlbaum, whose acclaimed Have You Found Her I publicized earlier this year, will be giving her last reading until the fall. Roxana Robinson, whose new, highly praised novel, Cost, I am publicizing now, is not to be missed. The National Book Critics Circle just named Cost a "Good Reads" pick, and Vanity Fair says, "Roxana Robinson's novel Cost artfully portrays a family transformed by the far-reaching consequences of a son's heroin addiction."

Also, Arthur magazine (be still my heart) has posted its interview with Rudy Wurlitzer, author of The Drop Edge of Yonder.

And, Coffee House Press is having a moving sale, which entails "a web sale through June 30—50% off all of our titles," and so now you can pick up Laird Hunt's  The Exquisite, easily one of my favorite books I ever publicized, on the cheap cheap. Don't waste a moment.

The Sirens of Chicago

Pictured: a pair of silver high heels on the street in Lakeview.

Last night I returned from spending the weekend in Chicago for the Pilcrow Lit Fest with my friend Dana. It was my first time in the city and it particularly struck me as very green and low-density. The wide streets and abundance of neon signage best viewed from a car in motion lend the whole enterprise a mid-century optimism that I like. When we weren't going to or appearing on panels at the festival, we hung out with Dana's friend Tom, who's a brilliant, searingly sarcastic graphic designer and who kindly drove us around Oak Park, which has its own Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District. Another highlight was a gloriously fun dinner in Lakeview with Jami Attenberg, Wendy McClure, Timothy Schaffert and Laural Winter, and lunch on the Gold Coast at a little French bistro that plays Blossom Dearie and "My Baby Just Cares For Me" with a friend of Dana's family who regaled us with tales of her travels in India, Bhutan and China in the '70s and '80s and Italy and Santa Fe more recently. Mostly, just kicking around a new town was really fun; I didn't do much shopping per se but managed to come across the perfect straight-leg grey jeans, an oversize toffee brown hand-tooled leather belt with floral motif from Italy, and a pair of very Jane Birkin-esque white ballet flats. And of course we hit the photo booth at zine-tastic local landmark, Quimby's. On Saturday I moderated the closing panel on independent publishing with thirteen (!) participants from Featherproof Books, Future Tense Publishing, Impetus Press, Other Voices Books, So New Media, Two Dollar Radio, Word Riot, et al. After that we attended a benefit for the New Orleans Public Library Foundation, lovingly and masterfully emceed by Pilcrow's own Amy Guth and Leah Jones, which raised $4000 for possibly the best cause ever. On the way back, Dana and I chillaxed with iced chais in the airport and impetuously decided to upgrade to first class for the short but leisurely night flight. It couldn't have been a better decision. I'm not sure when I'll have a reason to return to Chicago, but my adventures in the Midwest are hardly over, as I'll be heading out to "Star City" for the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference -- with Kurt Andersen, Sean Wilsey, Meghan Daum, Kim Addonizio and more -- in three weeks, and then to Omaha for another Downtown... Lit Fest this fall.

Related, from Flickr: Me, moderating the afore-mentioned panel, and here we are at the opening night party at Matilda's.

The Sweetest Thing (+Smart Marketing)

Girls Write Now, the nonprofit for which I am the vice chair of the board, is having its spring reading on June 8 at Barnes & Noble in Tribeca, and one of the main sources of raising funds is selling ads in the program that is handed out at the event. I totally slept on this so I am posting it as it's a genius way to reach a desirable audience (hundreds of teens + parents + writers + creative professionals + cultural influencers + people with disposable income). And also, it's a fact that 100% of Lux Lotus readers are engaged in dreamy endeavors...

"It's the perfect opportunity for local businesses to reach a diverse yet targeted audience of young people, publishing professionals and the GWN community's family and friends. Ads range from $50 for 1/3 page to $75 for 1/2 page to $150 for 1 full page. Is there someone that would like to support GWN but can't attend the reading? Someone you know who would like to reach our audience? WE NEED ALL ADS BY MAY 24. IF YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR OWN ART, WE WILL DESIGN THE ADS."

Drop me a line if you'd like details. XO.

We're Like Two Ships

I just got home from ballet at Dance New Amsterdam and then the laughingest dinner at Pakistan Tea House (which appears, unnamed, in Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan) with my friends Lydia and Cian (whose elegant glasses are apparently standard issue from the Irish health service!), and now I have to catch some z's. Tomorrow, more to do -- work, travel -- but not enough time and so I'll return after the weekend.

Windowlicker

My sister and I had a circuitous conversation the other day when she asked me if I knew what those "preppy green jackets" are called, using "Kate from the gallery" as an example of someone who she had seen wearing one a couple of years ago. Finally, I realized the item in question was a Barbour coat, and this one, "a British country classic," is indeed lovely in almost precisely the evergreen way that my favorite line from Proust's Swann in Love always makes me smile: "Each kiss summons another." I suppose the same could be said for barn jackets.

[Barbour Active Classic Bedale Jacket, $345 at Orvis.com]

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.

Windy City

I returned from a relaxing weekend in the country to discover that photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths had sent me the proofs from a shoot we did last week (many thanks to Tayari Jones for making the connection via her excellent fundraiser). I needed a new image for professional purposes, which you can see at LaurenCerand.com. I also thought this one, taken on my balcony on a blustery day that turned out perfectly, would get things off to a lovely start this week here at Lux Lotus.

Tonight, I have an event at the Goethe-Institut New York, "What is Green Architecture?" with architect Christoph Ingenhoven and Andres Lepik of MoMA discussing next-wave trends in the field. Last time I learned about what it takes to engineer a carbon neutral city in the Middle East! This series is definitely a postcard from the future, so do join us if you're inclined. There's always a fun little reception afterwards filled with free wine and good-looking Europeans. And you know how I feel about all that, so I'm off to wind this messy mane of mine into a chignon.

So much to do before I leave for Chicago and the Nick Hornby-approved Pilcrow Lit Fest later this week!

Bright Lights

This morning I went to the New York Women's Foundation breakfast, which was awe-inspiring. I attended with Maya Nussbaum, executive director of Girls Write Now, and we sat with our friend Hali Lee and the Asian Women Giving Circle. CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour spoke eloquently to the hundreds of attendees and I couldn't see straight I was so starstruck. I was also very moved by the Ugandan activists who pooled their funds to raise $1000 for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. And Nevada Littlewolf, a city council member from Minnesota, who beautifully introduced Marie C. Wilson, who herself gave a rousing speech about courage, persistence and what it means for the world to invest in women. She also gave the crowd a mandate to, in some way in the next 24 hours, highlight the work of women currently doing great things...

Today, I'm thinking of Amy Guth, who, since we were goofing off at breakfast in Omaha last fall and she casually mentioned that she was thinking of putting together a literary festival in Chicago, has masterminded the inaugural Pilcrow Lit Fest, happening next week. I can't wait to go and support her vision -- the social highlight of the weekend is a benefit for public libraries in New Orleans! -- and especially a conference line-up that is the most gender-balanced I've ever seen (A cursory tally reveals 31 women out of 57 participants, which is extraordinary. Just ask Jen).  Other accolades today go to my friend Coco Young, whose Williamsburg-by-way-of-Marseille style is featured on a whole page in this month's Lucky magazine, and my neighbor Lindsey Thornburg, who makes capes perfect for traipsing across enchanted landscapes in (and isn't that always the plan?). And the sublime new Elizabeth Peyton show at Gavin Brown, especially the still-lifes.

Also, the biggest lesson I took away from this morning's event is a maxim that I've tried to incorporate into my own life and embrace by example, that anyone can be a philanthropist. In fact, you New Yorkers will have an opportunity to step up on May 27th when Roxana Robinson and Janice Erlbaum read at the beyond brilliant Other Means Reading Series (the hook: featured authors choose a charitable organization to direct the reading's suggested $5 admission towards; this month's good cause TBD).