Saturday, June 11, 2011

Last day

So Wednesday was my last day at Aqua Books, what bookstore owner Kelly Hughes has dubbed Winnipeg's Cultural City Hall.

And this is the view from my desk at Aqua, where I schemed up events for three years.

I'll miss the joint. I'll miss having the chance to chat with writers and musicians and actors and arts administrators about their events, to interact with readers and hand-sell my favourite titles.

(Frances Itani's Deafening. Colin Smith's 8X8X7. Jane Smiley's Moo. Kerry Ryan's The Sleeping Life. Timothy Findley's Famous Last Words. Joan Thomas' Reading By Lightning.)

But it will be nice not to be administering within my own discipline, to not have to be constantly weighing and measuring how much of conflict of interest I'm feeling at any one moment...

I'm also happy about my NEW job as Promotions/Editorial Assistant at the University of Manitoba Press.

I'm looking forward to the work but also how the OH SO INTERESTING topics they publish on (like social histories of the prairies, like literary criticism, like native studies) will influence my own work. Which is kind of a two-fer, if you get my drift...

Thanks for Kelly for the support over the years. For letting me swear in public. And for playing Hut 33 over the bookstore sound system when I needed it most...

Fergus: "Minka, you look very nice today."

Minka: "Correct."

2 comments:

tracy said...

Well, that must be very sad indeed, but a job greatly done A!

Kelly was lucky to have you!

Ariel Gordon said...

Thanks, T. It was a good place to be...