Book Nerd

This is Jennifer Whiteford, author of Grrrl (Gorsky Press, 2006). Another photo or two of her can be found on photos.johnwmacdonald.com in the poets and writers section of my gallery. This photograph was taken at the New Octopus Bookstore where she works as a bookish stock mistress. I believe this photo is a great addition to my gallery where there is a predominant pictorial glut of old men with beards...

I wanted to achieve something similar to the Robert Mitchum photo where he portrays Harry Powell in the film The Night of the Hunter - one of his hands is tattooed with "LOVE" on his knuckles, the other tattooed "HATE". I originally wanted to incorporate the title of her book as a knuckle tattoo, but the letter 'l' in Grrrl would not fit on one hand. She came up with the idea of having 'book' and 'nerd', and that's what I drew on her fingers with a sharpie. Jennifer told me, "It's funny, because one of the reasons I chose the photo I did for the cover of the book was because the girl in it has 'rock' and 'star' tattooed on her knuckles."

Jennifer will be reading this Wednesday evening along with Festri, Indri, Jess Carfagnini, and Sean Zio as part of Ina Julien's quirky zine, the dyketionnary vol.1. Lookout Bar 7pm.