Alison O. Bender

I was at my library last week and, lo and behold, there was Tahoe Blues on the ‘featured reads’ section! It was so exciting to see a work that I participated in on the shelf, and I pointed it out to my toddler, who didn’t seem to care.

THEN, this past weekend, I was in Truckee to visit my friend Vanessa. We were poking into all the little shops and boutiques downtown (why couldn’t the cupcake store have opened while I still lived there?) and we wandered into a store called Bespoke. Again, I saw Tahoe Blues.

“Have you seen this?” Vanessa asked. “It’s a great little book; I was flipping through a friend’s copy the other week.”

When I showed her my byline, she was somehow even more excited than I was and bought a copy while announcing to the entire store that I contributed to the book. And, on that note, Bona Fide Books is looking for submissions for a follow-up to Tahoe Blues called Tahoe Sepia, a compilation of short, 1,000-word pieces chronicling the area’s past. It combines two of my favorite subjects, Lake Tahoe and history, so I’m very excited to start work on my submission!

I’m belated, but the Winter issue of Tahoe Quarterly is on stands! It’s a great issue. I profile Truckee artist Annie Hooker, whose 1940s-era paintings deal with notions of nostalgia. There are some great stories, including a feature article dealing with the tenuous relationship between bears and humans in the Tahoe Basin, a gorgeous piece on different types of snowflakes and an article about people who ski every month of the year. These people are insane: One guy has been skiing every month for 18 years; another guy is my husband, who was on a 26-month streak at the time of his interview and is now pretty close to 30! Like I said, insane people!