Friday, May 08, 2009

False advertising

In a flier for an upcoming book festival, Dr. Veronica Esagui writes, "...I am a member of PNBA, NWABP, Willamette Writers and The Oregon Literary Review."

Really?! Well, yours truly is the founding editor of OLR and the only members I'm aware of are the staff members I appointed. What a strange thing to claim. What does it mean for any review to have "members"? Subscribers, yes, but we are free. I suppose this could be construed as flattery since she wants to be in good company. Of course, I wrote her, asking what the hell she means. Wonder how she'll squirm out of this. Puts a definite "bad taste" on her book festival, of course, which she calls the 1st Annual NW Book Festival. Bad vibes, bad vibes.

2 comments:

Grimus said...

Did she ever write back?

I love to hear the story of scammers getting called out.

Especially when they've got official sounding titles, like Doctor.

Charles Deemer said...

Yes, she did, and said it was all a misunderstanding and she has a new flier with correct info. I don't know how stupidity -- "joining" a journal -- is a misunderstanding, but it's not worth doing more.

I caught her a 2nd time but didn't follow up: she raved about what a great reading we had Wed night, and I saw her leave at intermission. I knew who she was because she gave me a flier at the meeting, only I just stuffed it in a pocket and didn't read it till I got home. Another editor has dealt with her before and says she's a pain in the butt. She's older, not a good rep for us old farts ha ha.