Scene @ LA Times Book Prize After-Party

The after-party for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, held on a large plaza behind UCLA’s Royce Hall, attracted a significant cluster of southern California’s literati, as well as the writers and publishers who were in town for the Festival of Books.

I can’t remember exactly what novelist Tod Goldberg could have said to provoke such a reaction from memoirist Bridget Kinsella, but it probably wouldn’t be quotable here even if I could. (On his own blog, though, all bets are off.)

Albert Goldbarth, a finalist in the poetry category, hangs out with Graywolf Press editorial director Fiona McCrae.

It turned out that Charles Bock and Tin House editor Rob Spillman used to play basketball together years ago. Their respective panels on Saturday—Bock with other novelists discussing the role of place in their stories, and Spillman moderating a discussion with some of the authors from his magazine’s recent issue about women writers blurring the lines between “literary fiction” and fantasy—were held up as highlights of the weekend afterwards.

Novelists Darcy Cosper and Brock Clarke were very kind about how I wandered over, thinking at first that Cosper was another writer I know, before I realized that we’d met at mediabistro.com parties here in New York. (This wasn’t even my worst misrecognition of the weekend, which came the following night when I congratulated a prominent book review editor for winning one of the Book Prizes. In my defense, said editor had shaved off his goatee since the last time I’d seen him.)

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