Steve Yates reads the Green Tomato Marquesa’s Night of a Thousand and One Triumphs at Lemuria Books from Steven B Yates on Vimeo.

I have often thought about family, that embracing, nurturing metaphor, when I travel to visit the many Mississippi independent bookstores I serve for University Press of Mississippi. You can learn about this second family of mine by glancing through http://www.squidoo.com/Mississippi-Bookstores . When I think of Diane Shepherd at Main Street Books in Hattiesburg, or Laura Weeks at Lorelei Books in Vicksburg, or Mary Emrick at Turning Pages in Natchez, or Scott Naugle at Pass Christian Books, or Jamie Kornegay at Turnrow Book Co., the commerce we have conducted, the books we have shared, the whole enterprise of caring for one another and bettering the bookstore experience for customers takes on the deeply emotional tones and sentiments of family experience. It has its repetitions, its traditions, its rewards, even in some senses its ceremonies, this golden duty of traveling and helping book sellers. In the vimeo pasted above, I have to say I had to take a moment and recover, for John Evans had said what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed. I was quite moved to hear him say before my reading from my new short story collection, Some Kinds of Love: Stories, “Let’s gather up for Steve. He is sort of like family.”