Two authors in as many nights: Wow

It’s not often that you get to see two critically acclaimed, national-book-award winners show up to read in Spokane. But that’s exactly what happened last night and tonight in the Lilac Citry.

Last night it was Denis Johnson, National Book Award winner for the novel “Tree of Smoke,” who read at Gonzaga University . Johnson read from his new novel “Nobody Move.”

Tonight it was Jess Walter who treated his hometown to a reading of his new novel “The Financial Lives of the Poets.” An Auntie’s Bookstore full house showed up to see him, which meant that I had to stand so far back that I could hardly hear him read, even with the help of a microphone. My misfortune, though, meant success for Jess, who was as funny as he always is – even the time, years ago, when I emceed one of his Auntie’s appearances.

An interesting thing about Johnson’s event was that, in the middle of his reading, he stopped because … he found a grammatical error. He stopped, explained what was wrong, pulled out a pen and marked the page – 67 – and then continued.

Here’s the mistake: “She lay her head back on the headrest and closed her eyes.” It should read “She laid her head back on the headrest and closed her eyes.”

If seeing two national-level authors read from their works in as many night is rare, so is watching a writer rewrite his book in public.