“Get It While It’s Hot” Virtual Book Launch
LSU Press
Virtual
April 29
What do you think of when you hear the words “gas station food”? If you’re not from the American South, you might think of hot dogs slowly dehydrating, rotating into oblivion or the ultraprocessed snacks that leave brightly covered dust all over your steering wheel. The editors and contributors of LSU Press’ latest book, “Get it While It’s Hot: Gas Station, Roadside, and Convenience Cuisine in the U.S. South,” know that there’s so much more than that. In fact, some of the best food you can get comes from gas stations.
“These spaces don't function like typical restaurants,” said editor Constance Bailey, reading from the introduction of the book. “Instead, they mark boundaries of community. They establish consistency and familiarity. They see you on your way and perhaps paradoxically invite you to pull up a chair and sit a while.”
In a virtual book launch on Wednesday, Constance Bailey, Shelley Ingram and Casey Kayser, the three editors of the essay collection, sat down to discuss the book over Facebook Live. The three editors are academics by trade. They teach at Georgia State University, UL in Lafayette, and the University of Arkansas, respectively.
The collection brought together more than just scholars: influencers, food writers even a CEO.
There’s a challenging balance to strike when one does a book launch event. Definitionally, most people haven’t read the book yet. The people most likely to attend an event like this either were involved in the making of the book or are invested enough to have read at least some of it. A successful book launch engages both groups of people, and this book launch did.
To set the stage, the editors read a little from the introduction and asked each other a few questions about the road trips that made the book possible, fun facts they learned while editing the collection and their favorite essays.
Casey Kayser talked about an essay about Bruce A. Craft’s essay about Punjabi Dhaba, an Indian restaurant/gas station in Hammond, Louisiana. Dhaba, she said, are roadside Indian cafes that have popped up in response to the growing number of truckers of Indian descent in the U.S. Bailey highlighted an essay by Na'Imah Ford about a convenience store in Tallahassee that has since burned down. Their conversation highlighted both what special places these local stops are and their transience. Besides the Tallahassee convenience store, some of the other spots they wanted to highlight closed or moved in the making of the book.
“You'll go, you'll eat something, it's delicious. You'll try to come back a year later and it's just something completely different or you can't find it,” said Ingram. “It just pops up when you need it and then it goes away.”
The conversation between editors felt like a conversation between old friends, it was a strong choice not to have a moderator for this portion of the conversation. Afterward, seemingly out of nowhere, a moderator appeared over the poster for the event to take and pose audience questions. By then, the rapport with the invisible audience had been built, and people did ask questions.
The virtual book launch was enough to make anyone want to plan a Southern roadtrip of their own or at the very least, hop in their car and find a gas station to eat at.
