Lake Tahoe writers share their craft with enthusiastic crowd

By Kathryn Reed

CAMP RICHARDSON – If there were any doubt about the written (and spoken) word not thriving in Lake Tahoe, those concerns were laid to rest Friday night.

Seven authors read from their work during the third annual Celebration of Writers Around the Lake at Valhalla. The event each year features authors from the basin or people who have written about Tahoe.

Readers and writers mix Sept. 16 at Celebration of Writers Around the Lake. Photo/LTN

Besides being an opportunity to mingle with the writers while sipping wine from Après Wine Company, it was a time to hear their words. Each read a passage from the books they were also selling and signing.

The writers and their work:

• Suzanne Roberts, “Three Hours to Burn a Body”

• Andrew Homan, “Life in the Slipstream: The Legend of Bobby Walthour Sr.”

• Janet Smith, “All of a Sudden, Nothing Happened”; and “Pretty Enough” from “Permanent Vacation”

• Terry Easley, “The Kismet Blade”

• Janet Kaidantzis, “Fallen Leaf Lake: A Lake and its People, 1850-1950”

• Gailmarie Pahmeier, “Shake It and it Snows”

• Ben Arnold, “Synaptic Traffic: Intersections of Prose & Poetry”.

While the poets seemed to better capture the attention of the nearly 40-people attending the event, to the credit of the others – it’s hard to adequately capture history or other genres in a short time span.

To all of their credit, it made the listener want more – either to have the night continue or add a book to the nightstand.

Arnold and Pahmeier displayed the most emotion. As Bona Fide Books Publisher Kim Wyatt said, “They throw themselves into the performances of their work.”

Roberts, who is also an instructor at Lake Tahoe Community College, relayed to the audience that after her mother read “Shameless” she said, “Please tell me you didn’t do this.”

While no mother would want their daughter to be the subject of that poem, many women might like the opportunity.

The celebration started as a way to showcase the talent around the basin – and increase their readership, Wyatt said. The celebration is put on by Tahoe Writers Works, a group dedicated to the written word. The South Shore-based organization puts out a collection of stories and images each year called “EDGE” – with the next volume due this fall.

“We have been told we need to charge more, but we keep the price low so people can afford to buy books,” Wyatt, a member of Tahoe Writers Works, said after the event. (The $10 fee also included wine.)

Having fewer writers (there were 12 in 2010) is a trend organizers want to continue. Now the criteria to be invited is an author has to have a book published in the last year.

Wyatt said the only downside Friday was another literary event that night in Incline kept those from the North Shore from attending. Creating a master calendar of all things literary in the region is being talked about.