Welcome to Oz, where content truly is king

So shiny... on the 139
non-overcast days per year.
Copyright amandacastleman.com

The literati blew through town last week. Apparently Seattle's (mostly legal) weed-delivery services ran in and out of the conference hotel non-stop... I imagine accountants are having fun now with those expense reports for "research" and "food and entertainment."

The Emerald City made many authors misty-eyed, like The New Yorker's Sasha Weiss, who cooed about the land of Amazon, where "poets and crafty storytellers were kings and queens."

"So long as there are two hundred people trying to stuff themselves into a room to hear five poets talk about philosophical ideals, there will be books left to read and write."

Thomas Swick – my travel-writing colleague and occasional co-teacher for Writers.com – also left inspired. He wrote a moving vignette about how literary culture percolates right down to the streets here.

I'm sure glad our bookishness ignited Tom's imagination, instead of those epic traffic jams I got him mired in...

A salmon statue watches over Seattle from Alki. Image copyright www.amandacastleman.com.