I met the author Tony Horwitz at a book fair about seven years ago, in Nashville. I was there promoting my second book. I didn't know anybody and felt out of place, so naïve, so clumsy. My badge got me into the authors area. Tony was palling around with another writer, his friend Jack Hitt, and for no good reason—we'd never met—Tony couldn't have been nicer or more outgoing. He came to one of my readings. He showed me around, he was funny, he was charming. I don't remember a single other thing from that fair, except for learning that Tony Horwitz, whom I’d admired since I first read Confederates in the Attic, was in real life one of the sweetest people in the world. Tony died last year at age 60 from a sudden cardiac arrest. He was on book tour. To this day, at public events, I think of him and how he carried himself, and tell myself in my head, Try to be more like Tony Horwitz. I barely knew him and I miss him a lot.
No posts