Louisiana Book Festival Update

I just got asked to be a part of a discussion panel about blogging

Discussion: Blogging Is Writing, Too…Or Is It?

with Scott Douglas, columnist with McSweeney's, author of Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian and blogger of Speak Quietly: Ramblings About Libraries, Writing, and Everything in Between at the Louisiana Book Festival on October 4, 2:00 PM.

I confess that I have yet to read Scott's book and I think its a safe bet he hasn't read mine since I just got asked this morning, but I like the tenor of his blog: smart, personal, just self-promotional enough, centered on, but not narrowed to, a topic.

There will be some flavor of live-blogging of this event going on, and I might twitter up the whole festival from my phone or document it with Facebook status updates ("Alex is hoping he he doesn't forget that really witty remark before that other guy stops talking") or maybe I'll just go ahead and get that chip implanted that allows me to blog with my mind.

I'll also be on the Oxford American panel, discussing some of the things in the New Orleans/Gulf Coast Issue. It is likely that the discussion will start with earnest, inciting flares of rage and heartfelt pleas for persistence and growth, and then quickly devolve into an hour of talking about Lil Wayne before a crowd of MFA students in the Senate chambers.

Here is actual on the Internet proof, verifying that I am not just pretending to be on a panel this time. I will be in the book tent signing books as well. When I'm not attending the Hindenbergian inflated ego I will have over these honors, I will be floating between the 225 Magazine and Country Roads tents (though Country Roads usually has cake at theirs, so....) . The book festival is routinely a bringer of fantastic weather and there is killer festival food and kid's tent activities in excelsis. I predict some variety of sauce will be dribbled down the front of my shirt, so don't be alarmed.