Come with me, meet an editor

I had a period a few years ago when, on the train to or from New York, next to me was seated a writer. Always. I've posted here about my adventures meeting another writer time and again in the nut aisle at Whole Foods. (We met for coffee there earlier this week, a location she proposed in an email with the subject line, "chock full 'o nuts.")

A few very close to me say it's my fault, that I strike up these conversations, that these poor writers likely cherish their privacy and I'm barging in on their otherwise contemplative lives.

Explain this, then. Yesterday, coffee (though first I had green tea and then water) with Hal Richman, whom I've corresponded with over the years about collaboration, virtual teams, and the like. Hal was passing through on his way from Nova Scotia  to Indonesia and happened to be staying here in Newton, Mass. for a night.

We talked so long that we closed up one joint (don't get excited, closing time is 4 PM on Saturdays) and moved to a second coffee shop, across the street, although, again, no coffee was involved. (He had ice cream, this was when I drank the water.)

Yammer, yammer, we went, what about this connection, what about that...and off I was talking about the trend whereby medical institutions now also are literary publishers (Bellevue Hospital in NY, Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, a few others). Bellevue also publishes books, I said, repeating what I'd read in the NY Times (not just on some unreliable blog).

At the next table were a mother and daughter (also eating ice cream). We smiled and I noticed that she had on a cool brown suede vest with no collar, nice buttons.

"Excuse me," she said almost in a whisper.

"I'm sorry for eavesdropping but Bellevue is publishing books?"

"Um, yes."

She must have seen the question about to come out of my mouth. "I publish a literary journal," said she, poet Jenny Barber, founder and editor of Salamander, now in its 15th year and housed at Suffolk University in Boston.

Comments

[Ron Currie]

And the coincidences continue to pile up: Barber went to Colby College, right here in Waterville.