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THE LAST GRAND TOUR’s Launch a Huge Success!

The Last Grand Tour‘s entrance into the world came on January 28, and its first two weeks have been far more successful than I or my publisher hoped.

On launch day, I returned to Portland State University for the first time since retiring (in 2017) from 17 years of teaching in the creative writing program there. The reason for my return was a panel discussion with my publisher (Mike Schepps), editor (Molly Simas), and book designer (Olivia Croom Hammerman) titled “From Manuscript to Marketplace: The Last Grand Tour’s Collaborative Journey.” We had a lovely turnout, with current and former students, faculty, and community members.

That evening, I appeared at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland with documentary filmmaker Brian Lindstrom interviewing me. The place was packed, with friends from many parts of my life attending, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years. A Powell’s representative told me there were 80 people there, and they sold so many books, my publisher had to run out for more.

That same day, Portland author Suzy Vitello released an interview with me about The Last Grand Tour on her Substack, “Let’s Talk About Writing.” You can read it here.

Two days later, on January 30, I was back in the Seattle area at the Edmonds Bookshop, where 50 people showed up to hear my good friend and fellow European guide Gene Openshaw interview me.

Then, this past Thursday, Sylvia and I traveled up to snowy Bellingham, where the turnout was smaller but still filled the event space. Gene Openshaw was my partner on stage again and the conversation range even more widely, thanks to some great audience questions. We talked about everything from post-Wall European freedom to Romanticism to my development as a writer and how a fiction writer creates an imagined world.

The next event on the Last Grand Tour tour will be the book’s Seattle launch at Third Place Books in Ravenna at 7 p.m. this coming Tuesday, November 11. Click on the image below for more details.

Substack Interview with Michael N. McGregor about His New Novel: The Last Grand Tour

Michael N. McGregor Talks about His New Novel

The other day, Suzy Vitello, author of the marvelous Northwest-set novel Bitterroot, interviewed me about my new novel, The Last Grand Tour, for her popular Substack newsletter, Let’s Talk About Writing.

Among the questions and answers was the following exchange:

SV: You chose to filter this story through one character: Joe. How did you navigate and pace the sprinkling of secrets that Joe (and the reader) would uncover by novel’s end?

MNM: I started by mimicking a tour guide’s experiences. When a group shows up, you know nothing about them. Over two or three weeks, however, as you spend days and nights with them, you learn more and more. You hear their stories, observe their actions, listen to their words. Along the way, you try to assemble a picture of them from pieces that emerge in somewhat random order.

A novel can’t be entirely random, though. So I took advantage of the fact that people tend to reveal themselves most at tense moments, especially when traveling. While some of those moments are shared, most are highly personal. Rudy, for example, reacts to being in the city where Hitler gained power. Felicity opens up when she visits a city she always wanted to sing in. And Tonia talks about her past when she returns to a place she went with her husband.

Photo by Nicolas Chometowski on Unsplash

Because Joe is present for each of these revelations but doesn’t have the context necessary to understand them fully, he tries to make sense of them by putting them together with what he already knows. His limited knowledge forces the reader to assemble the bigger story too, deciding along the way whether Joe’s version of things is correct or not. This allows for dramatic reversals. Again and again in the book Joe begins to believe something is true, only to learn or observe something else that makes him see things differently.

The revelations and reversals cause us, as readers, to pay closer attention, challenging our own suppositions of what is true. As our views shift of the various characters, including Joe himself, we find ourselves working down through the onion layers, hoping to reach the core before the tour reaches Venice.

You can read the full interview here.

Tonight! At 7 p.m. at Powell’s in Portland

I’ll be appearing at Powell’s Books at 7 p.m. tonight, in conversation with historian Amanda Bellows, talking about her new book, The Explorers.

The Explorers is a retelling of America’s exploratory history with women, people of color, and immigrants foregrounded. Among the figures focused on are: Sacagawea, Black mountain man James Beckwourth, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Black polar explorer Matthew Henson, early pilot Amelia Earhart, and astronaut Sally Ride. The book is a great read and a welcome update to history as most of us have been taught it.

One of the things I like most about the book is how refreshing it is to see history through the eyes of someone other than white men. For example, in the chapter on Sacagawea, Bellows tells us she longed to see the Pacific Ocean but Lewis and Clark didn’t include her in the first group that went there from Fort Clatsop. She had to insist on going with a later group. This tells us more about her as an individual and helps to bring her more vividly to life.

It should be a stimulating discussion. I hope to see you there.

Coming This August: The Cascadia Writers-In-Conversation Series

I’m excited to announce that starting this August, I’ll be partnering with the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, Washington (just north of Seattle), to host a new monthly series called Writers in Conversation.

On the second Thursday of each month, we’ll bring one Northwest writer in front of an enthusiastic audience for a brief reading, a lengthy discussion of his or her work, and a question-and-answer session with engaged literature lovers.

The main idea of the new series is to showcase the wealth of writing talent in the Pacific Northwest. To that end, we’ll feature writers from different genres at different stages of their careers who may have been overlooked rather than those readers already know.

Writers who appear in the series will also be featured, along with their work, on an updated and expanded version of the website WritingtheNorthwest.com.

This will be a unique chance to hear talented writers speak in-depth about what it means to be an author in the Northwest and why and how they create their works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The conversations will all take place in one of Cascadia’s beautiful galleries, with Northwest art lining the walls.

Cascadia Art Museum is the only museum dedicated to artists and their works from the Pacific Northwest. Focused on visual art and design from 1860 to 1970, it is committed to the belief that recognizing previously neglected artists who made significant contributions to the region’s cultural identity gives us a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of Northwest art history. The Writers in Conversation series signals the museum’s desire to highlight underappreciated NW artists in literature as well.

The first conversation starts at 6 p.m. on Thursday, August 8. Check back later this summer for more details and to learn who our first featured writer will be.

Here’s a peek at the space we’ll fill with good conversation and an enthusiastic audience just a few months from now: