Literary Lunch with Susan, Jamie, Heather

The only book we looked at during lunch was the chapbook sized pamphlet The Manly Art of Knitting, but because we had four writers in our company, it was (in retrospect) a meeting of the Screen Porch Literary Guild. Heather Finch was the guest of honor because she drove the farthest; you might know her from the People’s Food Co-op or from Water Street Coffee Joint. Currently Heather is living in Sturgis with her ma, who will not let her have a goat. We all advised her about creating a blog called Living in Sturgis, or something like that. Award-winning poet Susan Ramsey came by with Swedish Spritz cookies—she did not bring the camel shaped cookies, but only the round ones. She was knitting a scarf even as she ate, talked and read from the Manly Art of Knitting. She suggested that Heather Finch apply to the Notre Dame MFA creative writing program. Jamie Blake, aspiring young adult author brought three loaves of French bread to assure we had the anti-Atkins lunch. She admired Heather Finch’s sweater, which had two owls on it, one that said “whoooo” and the other said “whom.” Christopher was with us, of course, and Mike Campbell happened to show up. We ate French Onion Soup and some turkey tetrazini and bread and butter and then cookies and candy for dessert, and we drank coffee. Heather told us about her bad ex-boyfriend and said we should kick him if we see him and we will.


The cool grainy photo of Susan is from her MFA graduation party; the other one is ofJamie Blake and me.

Art for story collection "American Salvage"

(Scroll down to earlier entry to see photos)

My third book, my second story collection will be coming out in the Spring from Wayne State University Press (Yea!) Maya Rhodes, the fabulous assistant design and production manager invited me to send ideas I had for cover art by Michigan artists (with the understanding that the decisions on design are theirs) so I sent her the photos below. I put them on this site because I wanted to share them with all of you. Please forgive the low resolution of the beautiful originals, but I still have dial-up internet service. I'm describing them in order of appearance below. I'm not a design person, but it was fun to think about cover art for a while.

1. Daguerreotype of corn by Charlie Schreiner, Saugatuck Artist, boyfriend of my friend Lisa Lenzo. He's pretty famous in the Daguerreotype community.

2. Mary Whelan took this photo of her daughter Frances and her nephew leaning against his Dukes of Hazard car. The photo is large format. She has other versions of the photo in which the girl's face is not blurred.

3. "Burl in the Beans" is by Kalamazoo photographer Jeff Mitchell

4. "Walking Man" is by Dylan Seuss-Brakeman. He leaned out of a car window in a blizzard and snapped this. Cool, eh?

5. This photo in green with train tracks is by Erin Dorbin, a Kalamazoo photographer. I took it from her Flickr site. I hope she doesn't mind.

6. This photo of four guys is by my dad, Rick Campbell, who worked as a news photographer for 52 years. The characters are Tracy Call, Mike Campbell, Tim Bowling, and Tom Campbell. It was the seventies, wasn't it?!

7. My dad took this photo of a wild woman at a bonfire, and it really looks like a book cover, don't you think?

8. This photo is Kellee, my niece. Susan Ramsey says she looks too good, almost Hollywood good. It's true that she's beautiful. My husband Christopher Magson took this photo.

9. Chris also took this photo of my mom outside the greenhouse she was constructing for her pawpaws saplings. She looks very proud.