Recollections of the Lisbon Conference
What the life of a publisher is really like
During the first conversation that Kristen and I had about publishing her novel LOG OFF alongside Oscar d’Artois’ book-length poem, THE ISLAND this spring, Kristen mentioned that she would be willing to travel (from the US, where she lives) to meet somewhere in Europe (where Oscar and I live) during the planning stages so that we could work together in person for a few days and spend some time together. We thought it would help us to come up with ideas we couldn’t conceive of in our Zoom meetings, and that it would make the whole thing feel more exciting and real. We considered a few location options, and started to settle on somewhere in France, but then I had another idea, so I texted Kristen on January 31st:
Three weeks later we were in Portugal.
Day 1, Saturday: Evening arrival, general supplies, and Nepalese food.
As soon as I arrived in Lisbon, on the train from Porto in the north of Portugal, I suggested that we go to the supermarket to acquire some ‘general supplies’.
General supplies included wine, beer, bananas, biscuits, nuts, chips & yoghurt.
I think I was particularly desperate to acquire general supplies because the previous day I had run 36km as part of my marathon training, and I didn’t want to be in a situation, even for a minute, where there was no food around.
We also immediately did a load of laundry and hung it up to dry while drinking glasses of vinho verde. We laughed as we hung the clothes up, cheersing over the drying rack, and saying this is an amazing way to begin the conference.
We walked for about ten minutes to a Nepalese restaurant where we met our friends Francisca and Pete. Everybody was excited and hungry. We explained our plans for the conference and how we were going to be having a lot of meetings. We said, in fact, tomorrow morning we will have our first meeting, and the objective of the meeting is to plan the schedule for the other meetings.
We had important business to discuss, and a list of talking points which included topics such as:
When are these books coming out exactly, lol
and
Publicity/marketing: Still not entirely sure what the difference is between the two
There was a powercut in the restaurant and the waiter apologised but we said no, don’t worry, we’re enjoying this.
Day 2, Sunday: General meeting on the Upper Terrace, lunch at Boulangerie and Zine Club!
On the Sunday morning, Kristen’s boyfriend Phil was due to arrive at Lisbon airport around 8am. At the Nepalese restaurant, I had explained to Francisca and Pete that Phil is not like a regular boyfriend. He’s a cool boyfriend. He’s Beef Gordon.
So to make him feel welcome and included despite his not officially being a part of the Shabby Doll House publishing process, we made him a welcome shrine in the living room. It featured a chocolate easter bunny, a bunch of bananas displayed tastefully around it, a red candle, and a sign that said WELCOME PHIL in big letters, with the words ‘please help yourself to a banana (or two!)’ written underneath.
When Phil walked in he was like, ‘Is that a… shrine?’
And I, pretending to be rearranging the laundry, but really just watching for his reaction, said, ‘…Yes.’
Anyway, Phil was jetlagged and needed to sleep, which was perfect because the rest of us had serious business to attend to, as I mentioned.
We met on the apartment’s Upper Terrace at 11:15am, after a quick 5km shakeout run. We ate pastéis de nata and drank lemonade. I opened the meeting with a short reading from the Collected Writings of Joe Brainard to get us in the zone.
Oscar took the minutes from the first meeting:
After this we headed to a nearby cafe and ate lunch overlooking The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. We discussed the books in a more casual and actually talking about writing way. Kristen and Oscar asked each other questions about each other’s processes, they compared acknowledgment sections and bios, we even talked about general life a little.
Later that afternoon, I was leading the first session of the Zine Writing Club that I just started. It’s a six week creative non-fiction writing course. And I was excited to see/meet the writers.
They were great. I love Zine Club. We started out with a session on unconventional reviews and talked about stuff like Kevin Killian’s Amazon reviews and Mira Gonzalez’s A Depressed Person’s Failed Review of Blue Is The Warmest Color.
It felt really great to spend the whole day working on Shabby Doll House projects.
After Zine Club, we were going to celebrate the first session with a drink on the Upper Terrace but it was raining! So we decided to go out to a cocktail bar instead. At the bar, there was a long conversation about something called Quake: The Lisbon Earthquake Experience which apparently simulates the 1755 earthquake that destroyed much of the city. Some people expressed an interest in visiting, but I feel pretty humourless when it comes to earthquakes so I tried not to say anything except to mention that by pure coincidence, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake is referenced in the prologue to THE ISLAND by Oscar d’Artois.
After this, we did a deep dive on what each person’s family thinks or doesn’t think about their writing/art, and we agreed that the ideal situation is for them to not care in the slightest.
On the way back from the bar, it was raining so much. We all got completely soaked but we didn’t let this dampen our spirit. Sitting on the floor of the apartment, I taught the group a ‘song’ that I had ‘written’ last year when we were on tour for SALMON and THE MOAN WILDS. It’s called Cucumber Triangle and it involves a lot of chanting. There are different parts for different people to sing. It’s insane, to be honest, but it makes me laugh. Oscar recorded a video of the group performing Cucumber Triangle and texted it to Rachelle Toarmino (of Peach Mag fame) and Aidan Ryan (of Foundlings Press fame) who had been present at the original performance last year:
There are certain things that you just can’t do in a Zoom meeting.
Already, it was feeling worthwhile to have come to Portugal.
Day 3, Monday: Publicity and Marketing meeting at Lou’s cafe.
On Monday morning, unfortunately I needed to engage with my actual job and teach some English classes through my computer. Oscar was translating things for money. And Kristen and Phil got to be jetlagged and sleep a little.
Monday’s agenda was pretty light. We were just scheduled to meet in the early afternoon to have a meeting about publicity and marketing, before vaguely walking around and exploring Lisbon a little.
After I finished working, we set out into the centre of the city to find somewhere we could talk. Once again, it started raining, so this expedited our search for a suitable cafe.
Once situated with sandwiches, smoothies and coffee between the three of us, Kristen (as official leader of this meeting) endeavoured to teach us the difference between publicity and marketing. And she even presented us with a spreadsheet of information she had begun gathering:
Oscar seemed visibly shaken by the official nature of the spreadsheet so we tried to assure him it would all be okay, or in fact, it would help us. We all admitted that the marketing part of the book release is the part we find the most daunting and, quite frankly, the most boring, but that we know that’s also why we’ve got to put a lot of effort into it, if we want these books to find a wider readership.
While I’m on the subject, if you're reading this and you think you can help in this department, let me know. We’re down for all interviews, features, podcasts, bookclubs, whatever you’ve got. I could teach you the words to cucumber triangle as a thank you.
Something cool that happened in this meeting was that we looked at the almost finished covers side by side for the first time and got to see how the two books might look together.
After the meeting, we walked around and talked about our forthcoming meetings. Just kidding. But we did start to consider what we might do on our last night together, Friday evening. I suggested maybe we should have a reading over a group dinner, so everyone could hear from both of the new books. We could have a Conference Closing Ceremony. Maybe everyone could perform something. I could make a poster. We could even post the poster online. Pretend we were doing an actual event to make it seem like we were doing something cool in Portugal. Maybe it would help promote the books. Remind people we’re busy working on this. Our Lisbon debut. We could take photos of the performers, the pretend audience just out of shot. How would anybody know what really happened?
They wouldn’t.
In the evening, I invited Kristen to come to one of my classes to meet a real teenage reader.
LOG OFF is a novel narrated by a 16 year old Asian-American girl, and my student is a 14 year old Asian-European girl. I thought that she would love the book and would be super excited to meet the author. Plus I thought it would be good practice for Kristen to do a short reading and Q&A to a private audience. We’ve talked a lot about how the book is nostalgic for people of our generation, for anyone who grew up online in the early 2000s when the book is set. But we didn’t really know how it would look to a younger audience, present day teenagers who think of 9/11 as a historical event.
When we explained the premise of LOG OFF to my student, we had to clarify what LiveJournal was and talk about how people generally only had one computer in their home for the whole family to share. But once Kristen started reading, everything made perfect sense. I saw my student’s face light up and laugh and break into a big smile as she recognised her own experience in the story. When Kristen stopped reading after a few minutes, I asked my student if she had any questions, and she immediately knew what she wanted to ask: Did any of this novel come from your own life?
I felt really proud of my student and of Kristen, and also really kind of wholesome and empowered to be in this situation. We showed her The Bushwick Review, the magazine that Kristen edited for a decade, and talked about how it started out as a place for friends to share their work together. How Kristen and I had become friends through collaboration.
Then I asked her if she wanted to share any of her work with us. She’s an amazing artist. And she immediately said yes! And texted me a selection of her drawings. I felt like we were all talking together as serious women artists, even though two of us were in our thirties and one of us was fourteen.
When the class ended and we logged off, Kristen and I were beaming. My student texted me to say that was so fun and could I tell her the name of the book again?
It made me feel even more excited about LOG OFF, seeing her reaction, because I knew it was completely genuine.
I have to stop writing now because Substack is telling me I’m near the ‘email length limit’, so this is going to have to be a two parter. Tune in next time to find out what else happened at the conference…!