I got a new video camera this spring. One of the first things I recorded was a reading by Neil Gaiman at the University of Chicago campus. I hadn’t been down there since I was a kid, when I wanted to go to the U of Chicago because it’s where Indiana Jones went.Anyway, Gaiman’s book Neverwhere was chosen for the Chicago Public Library’s One Book, One Chicago program, so he came to town and did a couple of readings. I taped his reading at Rockefeller Chapel, after which he stuck around for some audience Q&A. I stood in the line to ask a question, but they cut the questions off after the guy who went ahead of me (and the arrogant jerk-off starts with, ‘my FIRST question…’). Bummer, yo. I wasn’t too sad, though, because he talked about the episode of ‘Doctor Who’ he wrote, which was awesome.

James Kennedy is a young adult author. He introduced Gaiman in an original and hilarious way.
I got some good angles, though there’s a lot of superfluous zooming as well as some general incompetence – like I said, I didn’t have much experience with this camera.

The first vid is a condensed version of Kennedy’s intro. I didn’t get it all – afraid I’d run out of battery.

These last three are Gaiman’s reading as well as the Q&A session.