Last night [Shuggy'sman] and I went to "An Evening with Annie Proulx" - $NZ20 and a glass of wine - at a hotel meeting room, with the usual hard chairs, low ceiling, dim lighting, etc. (In fact we could hardly see her.)
She spoke almost off the cuff, very lucidly about Bird Cloud and its writing, writing in general, Brokeback and the reaction (apparently a lot of people in Wyoming would not believe there had ever been any gay people in Wyoming). (Cold) weather and protection against it figured strongly. The first words of the woman whose place she was using to write when she first went to Wyoming were "Let me show you the furnace!" She's a striking personality, warmth tempered by strength. One odd thing was how little her family figured. If she had a husband, or her children a father, we never learnt his name.
We were almost first in line to see her afterward since we'd already bought our book, not Bird Cloud, of course but Close Range of course, the edition with Jack and Heath on the cover. She took it and signed it before she spoke to us, so no message. Just her name in tiny handwriting. (Does she have Parkinson's? Micrographia is a symptom.) Then we stumbled over each other to tell her how BBM had changed our lives, by kickstarting us into living together, and when she got it she shook our hands and said "Grand!" I think that's the kind of changing the ending she likes.