Dear readers, friends, and readers who’ve become friends –
Welcome to the new site. It’s two - two books in one! - and will hopefully keep growing with more books down the road. When I started my first website, a year ago, I never imagined there would actually be more than that first book, which took every bit of blood, sweat, tears, and the few extra pounds of flesh I had, to write.
Now, you can CLICK ON EACH BOOK COVER, to enter those separate worlds — the haunted, Southern Gothic world of Harper Lee and Truman Capote… or the equally Gothic, true-life world of those wacky Powers twins.
My new novel, Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story, will begin hitting bookstores in mid-October. While based on many real and little-known events in the lives of Truman Capote and Harper Lee, it’s my imagined story - a “fantasia” — of their
great friendship, and even greater falling out, as Harper retreated from fame, and Truman gulped it down as greedily as he did his beloved “orange drink” (three parts vodka, one part juice.) If you ever loved To Kill a Mockingbird, as I did, or any of the fantastic writing of Truman Capote, you’ll want to read this, for which I’ve prepared a reading group guide as well.
And my memoir, The History of Swimming, is now out in paperback, capping off an incredible first year. The book got some great reviews, was a Barnes & Noble “Discover” selection, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award Best Memoir of the Year. For book clubs and reading groups, I’ve put together a discussion guide, and hope you’ll contact me about CALLING IN TO YOUR BOOK GROUP (especially if you’re eating chips and guacamole and having Margaritas on the other end of the speaker phone.)
And of course, you can always reach me by emailing me. [Email address: kphistswimming #AT# aol.com - replace #AT# with @ ](Just click on the brown print — it shoots the email directly to me. Isn’t it clever what the internet can do?)
Happy reading,
(That’s Mr.) Kim Powers
P.S. I’m offering TEN FREE COPIES of my memoir The History of Swimming to a winning bookclub. What do you have to do to win? Just write in and tell me a little bit about your club — why you like getting together, what books have gotten some of your liveliest conversations going, and why you think it’s important to have a little devoted time every month or so to get together and talk about books. Nothing major, I just want to get a sense of who’s reading what out there, and what might be a good fit for my book. But the big surprise here is — some of the groups I’ve thought least likely to “get” The History of Swimming have appreciated its message most! Just click on the underlined “email me” link in the paragraph up above. I look forward to meeting you all!
P.S. P.S. A lot of recent news in Capote-ville… and back in the old swimming pool. Capote’s been getting some great reviews, and very wide-spread ones, thanks in part to the radio interviews I’ve been able to do, all over the country. Many of them are archived, and I’ve linked to them under my “Events” section.
Also, Capote in Kansas has been nominated for two book awards so far: Best Book of the Year by the Southern Independent Booksellers Association (sibaweb.com) and Best Debut Gay Novel by the Lambda Literary Foundation. And one of my best friends I’ve never met, David Keymer, who reviewed it for Library Journal, listed it as one of this two favorite books of the past year!
There’s interest in publishing Capote in Kansas in France and Spain, and it looks like The History of Swimming might be published in Italy — so I’ve gone international!
I recently did a great TV interview for Capote for ABC News Now, so check your local listings, as they say, or go to ABCNews.com to access it. And the indefatigable (that means she never stops working!) Lisa Guadarini, who writes two great book blogs, bluestalking.typepad.com and bibliobuffet.com, did a print interview with me, about my literary leanings. You can always discover something about a great new book you’ve never heard of on her sites, so please check her out. (Plus she said Capote (my book, not the man) was “affecting and deeply wise, and a fine imagining of what might have been.”!)
