Kiara Brinkman

It didn't take long after we were introduced for Kiara to mention, as I stood across the counter from her at The Booksmith, where she works,

that she had sent me lots of stories. Starting from when she was going to Redwood High in Mill Valley.

But of course I had rejected all of them.

And now the paperback of her well-reviewed novel, Up High in the Trees, has just come out.

She was kind enough to inscribe my copy: "I hope to some day have a story in your fabulous journal."

Of course, Dave Eggers published an early story and she thanks him in the acknowledgments: "for taking a new writer seriously and continually finding the time to read my work."

I asked Kiara how she had managed to get her novel published, having published only a couple of stories: One of her teachers, Maud Casey, had put her in touch with her own agent.

(Maud's father is the novelist/teacher John Casey. I know Maud's aunt because 1) she married a college classmate of mine who won a Nobel Prize and 2) she was a mainstay of the late lamented San Francisco Review of Books. )

She'll be reading at The Booksmith on June 23.