My Julie Powell Cleaving interview at The Daily Beast

Monday morning I flew home on a redeye. Monday night I went to The Meat Hook in Williamsburg to interview Julie Powell about her new memoir Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession. I'm a little sad that the video we shot didn't come out, but hopefully in the future my flipcam will be in effect. Mostly I'm grateful I was able to do my job; 2 hours before I was sobbing hysterically with snot running out of my nose. Story for another time. Also good lesson: always find out exactly what will be happening in advance, take an author photo (especially when she's standing next to hunks of dead meat), and believe that everything will be okay. Sorry if it's obnoxious to link that way, but maybe that's a clue - I really want you to click through and read it since it's pretty much the only thing of substance I've done this stuffy-headed emotionally insane week!

Early reviews have shown as much squeamishness about the details of her affair as the gorier aspects of tearing apart hunks of meat. “My exploration of my sexual life felt like something I needed to write about,” she says. “It makes people uncomfortable. They get embarrassed for me, which I think is adorable, but if I get unhappy, that’s my problem; you don’t need to worry about me. I don’t like to be a big conspiracy theorist or feminist crazy person, but men have been writing about this for a long time. Maybe I don’t know what the f--- I’m getting into, but I wrote the book, I’m OK with it. You can criticize me all you like, but what you can’t do is say, ‘You’re a skanky, adulterous self-involved twit,’ because I wrote that already! It’s done; yes, that’s true.”

Julie Powell, Paula Derrow et al 2/24 at KGB Bar

I missed Ignite NYC tonight because I wasn't paying attention, and just found out about this, but I'm so going. Julie Powell's essay "Lost in Space" in Behind the Bedroom Door is a must-read for kinksters and if I don't get to republish it in Best Sex Writing 2010, I will cry.



You can also hear Paula Derrow, Pari Chang, and Anna Marrian read from Behind the Bedroom Door at the March 19th In The Flesh.

From KGB Nonfiction curator Kelly McMasters:

Tuesday February 24: KGB Tuesday Night Nonfiction offers you a belated
valentine with readings from the anthology BEHIND THE BEDROOM DOOR

DETAILS:
KGB Tuesday Night Nonfiction
7-8:30pm, Free!
KGB Bar, 85 East 4th St
(btw Bowery and 2nd Ave)
kgbbar.com

BEHIND THE BEDROOM DOOR: Getting it, Giving it, Loving it, Missing it

Readers: ***Pari Chang, Stephanie Dolgoff, Julie Powell, Abby Sher,
Martha Southgate, and Betsy Stephens, along with editor Paula
Derrow***

ABOUT THE ANTHOLOGY

What's Behind the Bedroom Door?

We may not admit it, but we're all curious about what goes on in other
people's bedrooms. After all, we live in a world saturated with sex,
which makes it tough not to wonder how we measure up—and even tougher
to talk about our experiences honestly. In this frank, poignant
collection, twenty-six acclaimed writers go Behind the Bedroom Door
and lay bare the messy, mind-blowing, often hilarious encounters that
make up a woman's sexual history. Telling the truth about sex—how we
like it, how often we get it, how it affects us—isn't easy. This
eye-opening anthology tells the truth about women's intimate lives,
shattering some deeply entrenched myths about what goes on in the
bedrooms of real women along the way. Find more information here:
behindthebedroomdoor.typepad.com

And not about sex, but because I'm so jonesing to read Powell's new memoir Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, here's a video from YouTube of her visiting a butcher shop: