Dreams Under Glass at Elliott Bay Book Company; Daughters of the Air, a staff pick at Left Bank Books,; practicing my smize; the traditional book haul on hotel bed picture; signing books at the Lanternfish Press table.

Coming back to Seattle for AWP after having moved away nearly four years ago stirred up all kinds of feelings. I’m glad I decided to make a very specific plan to keep feelings of overwhelm in check. Bright and early on Thursday morning, I started with a panel on medical memoir as I think ahead to expanding my pieces in Newsweek, Healthline, and Catapult into a book (though to be clear, that book would be far in the future).

Health and Illness Narratives: Harnessing Medical Memoir to Impact a Broken System

Featuring: Mary Pan, Emily Maloney, Rana Awdish, Emily Silverman, Suzanne Koven

Each of the panelists at this discussion are both writers and health care practitioners, and each read briefly before the discussion began. Emily Silverman, who runs The Nocturnists, a storytelling community for healthcare workers, read an uplifiting piece from JAMA titled “Comic Relief,” about meeting her idol Kate McKinnon. Emily Maloney read a tense excerpt from her essay collection The Cost of Living, about being a 23-year-old ER tech working at a hospital under the cloud of an enormous debt while carrying her own medical debt from an attempted suicide at age 19. Rana Awdish read a troubling excerpt from her memoir In Shock, about a terrible abdominal surgery done partly without anesthesia and being accused of being a drug addict. Suzanne Koven, author of Letter to a Young Female Physician read “The Doctor’s New Dilemma,” about struggling to ration out her time and emotional energy. Mary Pan read a harrowing memoir of her husband trying to get psychiatric help for paranoia and suicidal ideation and being told he’d have to wait at least a week—until she got on the phone and used her knowledge of the healthcare system to get him an appointment the next day—I still remember the image of him drawing the tip of a pair of scissors on his arm after she returned from nursing their eight-month-old child. What an image.

The panelists talked about the importance of storytelling. Awdish said that during the pandemic, the disbelief in science would have made her less compassionate toward patients who didn’t mask or get vaccinated, if she hadn’t also maintained a practice of storytelling and writing. Koven said the healthcare system dehumanizes patients, caretakers, and families but storytelling rehumanizes them; Easy Beauty is a memoir that helped show physicians they had no training for caring for patients with disabilities. Maloney said that helping healthcare workers tell their stories will help them advocate for improving the healthcare system. Awdish added that flipping between the point of view of patient and physician helped show her systemic problems in the healthcare system. I loved this quote from Suzanne Koven, who wasn’t sure if she read it somewhere or just came up with it: A doctor’s account of illness is a Victorian novel spanning many years but a patient’s account is a Virginia Woolf novel where every moment matters.

They also talked about voices that need to be included in the canon of illness narratives, which seem to be dominated by male physicians. We need to hear more from female physicians, patients, care givers, family members, cafeteria workers, medical helicopter pilots, and so on. An audience member asked about the ethics of patient memoir and whether that is self-exploitative. Maloney, who has a background in bioethics, said there really isn’t the same restriction as with a healthcare practitioner writing about patients; just write something honest and true that supports your experience, and don’t think about whether it is “too much” until after you’ve written. Suzanne Koven quoted Anne Lamott: “Tell the story, we’ll call the lawyers later.” A comment from the audience also brought up medical apartheid; the audience member said she’d been writing poetry but was considering switching to essays to find a broader audience; the panelists recommended Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on Health in America and Take My Hand a novel by Dolen Perkins-Valdez about the forced sterilization of African-American women. I hope that member of the audience gets their stories out.

This was an excellent panel and I’m glad it was early on in the conference before I got too tired!

The Lyric Essay as Resistance: A Reading and Celebration

Featuring Chloe Garcia Roberts, Chelsea Biondolillo, Molly McCully Brown, Hea-Ream Lee, Michael Torres

This reading celebrated the anthology The Lyric Essay as Resistance from Wayne State University Press. As I could have anticipated, I was already tired and did not take as many notes though it was very lovely to listen to each of the readers. I appreciated the panelists defining “resistance” in a number of ways. Lee called it resisting against forms, focusing on images and moving fluidly among timelines. Torres talked about arranging memories non-linearly. Brown asked: what shapes, architectures, bodies are you not seeing on the page—keep the lyric essay wild. Lee mentioned that expansiveness of form allows for invention. This was all reassuring as I bumble around in my lyric essay collection figuring out what feels right for each piece. Onward!

A Very Important Karaoke Party

During the day on Friday, I had a lovely time signing books at the Lanternfish Press table (some pictures above) and it was so nice to meet people who’d read the book or were eager to. Then that night I went to A Very Important Karaoke Party, a night of parody songs around the theme of the writing life at Hugo House. Paulette Perhach organized the event and I was delighted to help write a song based on “Under Pressure” called “Little Green Monster,” all about envy (and forgiving yourself and trying to overcome it). It was fun to see someone else belt it out with a fake Freddie Mercury mustache and very cathartic to sing along with all the songs in the back of the room where no one could hear my individual voice (the only way I will do karaoke!).

I am sure there are many more things I could have mentioned here about trip, but dang if I go on & on. It was great to reconnect with so many folks from my life in Seattle and I hope we can get back sooner than in four years. And I can’t wait to dive into the delicious books we acquired at the book fair (pictured above). If you went to the conference, feel free to share some highlights in the comments!

As with past AWPs, I found yesterday that I could really only digest two panels per day. I attended three, but the third panel was somewhat lost on me, unfortunately. This morning, I took in another informative session, however!

Behind the Curtain: An Insider's Look at Four Top Literary Journals

Panelists: Carolyn Kuebler, Oscar Villalon, Patrick Ryan, Julia Brown; Moderator: Matthew Landsburgh

I've been interested in the ins-and-outs of literary magazines (mostly as a writer and reader but occasionally as an editor) for a long time now, so I could not resist this panel.

Landsburgh asked each panelist to provide an overview of their journal, speak to the kinds of work they publish in print and online, speak to their process of selecting work, and also what is an easy rejection versus what catches their attention for potential publication.

Brown, a fiction editor at AGNI, based at Boston University, said that next year will be 50th anniversary of the journal. They publish 250 pages of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art twice a year, and AGNI 94 includes a Future of Translation portfolio representing 21 languages. They publish a similar variety of things on their blog but also do Q & As, more reviews, and graphic novel excerpts. They receive an astounding 21,000 submissions a year across genres, around 8,000 of which are for fiction, so are constantly reading and passing around submissions that are whittled down to 6-8 stories per issue. Brown likes to read one third of a piece; within the first few pages, she says, "you can tell if it is something you want to pass on to others or not." But also: “sometimes there’s a story like a thorn that isn’t to your taste but there’s something about it that makes you want to pass it on." Brown loves when she is being led through a story and the sentences are like bread crumbs--it feels exciting and dangerous. When there’s a honed sensibility in the language, “it’s evident from sentence one”

Villalon is the managing editor at ZZYZYVA, a San Francisco-based journal with no institutional affiliation, publishing poetry, fiction, nonfiction, interviews, and art three times per year. In addition to online classes, they do 27 events per year, which include festivals, conferences, and interviews at bookstores with contributors who have a new book, which sounds like a really nice way to build community. Villalon also noted that online publication is paid the same as print. They do not take online submissions, however, and they do not use readers— interns log submissions and do a first read mostly for their own benefit, making a maybe/maybe not pile but it’s for them to learn about common mistakes and what works well in a submission. Editors look at everything. Submissions with cliches and clunky sentences are a quick rejection. They are looking for a believable voice, conviction, something that sounds true, that it’s not a writing exercise or thought experiment but something meaningful.

Ryan, the editor in chief of One Story, also a magazine with no affiliation, said that next year is their 20th anniversary. They publish one short story per month in chapbook format have published 284 different writers so far, half of which it is their first publication. They receive 10-12,000 submissions per year, close 2 months a year to catch up. A volunteer team of 12-15 vetted, trained readers commit to reading 15 complete submissions per week and they must submit a “best” submission of the week (I love this requirement); an assistant editor reads the best ofs, then sends them to Ryan, who starts all of them and they work together to winnow down what to read next. Red flags include confusion and obscurity, a mistake made by a lot of emerging writers; no sense of urgency by page two, no sense that the story is going anywhere. But if a colleague says to read it, he reads the whole submission.

Kuebler, the editor of New England Review, which is based at Middlebury College, noted that they publish short short fiction to novellas, poetry, essays (critical, personal, lyric, travel), dramatic writing, and translations in all genres, but they do not publish reviews or art. Occasionally they do an emerging writers issue (e.g. writers who have not yet published a book). They have a podcast in which theater students at Middlebury perform published work which sounds lovely! A volunteer team of 20 readers (some recent grads, some retirees) read 10,000 submissions a year. The editors get to know the readers well before the readers can be quite brief in their comments on Submittable, where much of the conversation takes place. The editors will read the readers' comments and the submissions and then decide whether to advance story to Kuebler who “is the keeper of the big picture” in terms of what’s been published recently and what will be in future issues. She loves to get a submission where she wonders “how’s this going to work?” yet the piece feels authoritative.

The panel ended with the all-too-important urging of writers to subscribe to one or two journals. If every writer did this, it would create significant support for the literary ecosystem. So please do so if you don't! Happy subscribing, reading, and submitting!

When AWP announced their 2022 conference would be in Philadelphia, I was super excited to go and hang out with my publisher Lanternfish Press in their hometown. During the pandemic, I became a mom, and I'd thought by now perhaps there would be a vaccine for the littlest humans, but as the conference approached it became clear that there would not be one in time. I decided to attend virtually instead. (Fingers crossed for an in-person return to AWP in Seattle in 2023!)

I like to choose a theme for each AWP to narrow down the many options. One year I focused on literary agents. Another year I focused on learning more about the literary magazines I wanted to submit short stories and essays to. This year, I am putting the finishing touches on my third novel, set in the Netherlands in the late medieval/early Renaissance period and in 2016, and I am trying to make progress on my collection of lyric food essays that blend research and memoir, so I am focusing on panels on historic fiction and creative nonfiction.

What follows are some notes from the virtual panels I attended. I hope you find them helpful!

Staying in Key: Recognizing & Avoiding the False Notes of Anachronism

Panelists: Janet Benton, Donna Hemans, Keenan Norris, Jennifer Steil; Moderator: Aimee Liu

Liu invited each author to read a brief excerpt of their work and discuss the challenges they faced writing particular times and places.

Benton read from Lilli De Jong, set in a 19th century alms house in Philadelphia, near a swamp. In this scene, a pressing question for her was: what is the condition of a baby close to death? Her Quaker protagonist meant attending to language, interaction, spiritual belief, and characters' views of the choices they are making in very particular ways. In this time period, Benton noted, Quakers "were not slavish to religion" and "were willing to buck convention," something she wanted to stay cognizant of. At a reading, an octogenarian Quaker asked Benton how she managed to capture the voice of her grandmother, which sounds like quite an accomplishment!

Stiel read from Exile Music, which tells the story of Jewish refugees from Vienna in Boliva in the 1940s. She chose a passage that required a lot of research: what did La Paz look like in the 1940s? How did the refugees communicate, socialize, get help from refugee organizations? What was the effect of altitude on the body? One strategy for writing this book was to make Viennese culture as clear as possible first to demonstrate the sense of loss and disorientation upon arrival in La Paz. As someone who moves to a different country every few years, she now makes sure to take extensive notes upon arrival in each new place, to maintain that perspective.

Liu's novel Glorious Boy is also set in World War II, but on India's Andaman Islands, off the coast of Burma. Researching this novel is what gave Liu the idea for this panel. One question she had as a writer: what is it like to move through a forest that’s never been penetrated and you’re on a spy mission where you can’t leave a trace? The area was used as a penal colony by the British so there were also people from all over India, therefore making it quite a multicultural place. One strategy Liu used was to choose an American protagonist to help avoid anachronisms; she makes mistakes because she is American and then Liu as the author can make those mistakes clear to American readers.

Hemans's novel Tea by the Sea flashes forward to 2010, in Jamaica, where Plum, a young woman born in New York, is in search of the daughter that was taken away from her. As a Jamaican-born author, Hemans had to take care to consider how Plum would see Jamaica. She also needed to take care to depict the landscape of 2010 and not the one she grew up with; for example, a plant disease has ravaged many a coconut farm and there are less cane fields and orange groves than Hemans saw growing up. Hemans also talked about imbuing the landscape of Brooklyn upon Plum's return with a sense of loss.

Norris's novel The Confession of Copeland Cane is set in Oakland from 2020-2030. An important challenge was the need for "fidelity to present tense conditions while looking forward to the future.” For example, COVID emptied out San Francisco in the short term and he had to speculate how that might reverberate over the decade. A special challenge was that he began writing this novel in 2015. Liu remarked that his novel, published in 2021, was the first that showed people grappling with masks. He said, "The desperation of having to rethink my book was a great lesson in the creative risk of writing a book.”

What’s Form Got to Do with It: Finding Shape in Memoir Projects

Panelists: Tyrese Colman, Krys Malcom Belc, Marcos Gonsalez; Moderator: Sarah Fawn Montgomery

I came to this panel thinking about my essay collection but I came out of it also thinking about my one-day memoir of living with a rare chronic illness and choosing to grow my family through adoption.

Tyrese Coleman read from How to Sit, a memoir that is not 100% nonfiction: "Memories are not facts…they contain their own truth regardless of how they’re documented." She recommended David Sedaris's Barrel Fever as an example of a work that mixes fiction and nonfiction in one volume, though the genres are clearly delineated, and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street as examples of "memory writing." Her next book will mix historic fiction and memoir (exciting!) and as a memoirist who is not an academic or journalist she encourages others in the same position to provide context before feeling free to offer conclusions, e.g. don't feel obliged to be neutral in your own memoir.

Krys Malcom Belc's The Natural Mother of the Child is a memoir in essays that also includes speculative nonfiction, a genre I'd love to learn more about. As he was writing the book, he wondered: was this an essay collection that needed to be diversified or was this a memoir that needed more blending and cohesion? The book's central question: what does it mean to be a transmasculine person who has given birth? Each essay looks at this question but has its own aesthetic and level of research versus personal exploration. Belc spent a lot of time looking at pictures from childhood and legal documents, trying to understand his passage through time, and offers these materials to readers— it’s a visual book. Regarding the question of what research to include and what to exclude, he noted that editors can help point out where there is too much research--the stuff you’re nerding out on that an audience beyond you would not be so interested in.

Marcos Gonsalez wished that before he wrote Pedro’s Theory he'd asked himself “What is the narrative I want the reader to leave with? What are they moments?” The pre-writing process, he advised, should put key moments under a microscope and incorporate the perspectives of others even if it don't align with your own. He also urged the audience to consider: how can you make research reader-friendly and reader-inviting and integrate it into the fabric of the story? How do we include literary criticism or historiography, for example, while still inviting the reader in? Two inviting examples: Jenn Shapland's My Autobiography of Carson McCullers and Kate Zambreno’s Heroines. Of course you need to think about your audience when you consider this question. A final important consideration: what painful moments do you want to share with readers and what meaningful moments do you want to share on your own terms, without feeling overexposed?

Sarah Fawn Montgomery spoke to resisting the traditional narrative arc of memoirs of mental illness. She urged the audience: "don't revise your life." She said, "Flirting with the truth" helped her "stay true to madness" in her first memoir Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir. Her intended audience was her family, which did not go to the doctor, so she took medical language and research to show how doctors were overly sedating women or categorizing normal emotions as madness. Her forthcoming lyric memoir, Halfway from Home, blends Montaigneian essays with hermit crab essays and research in “the psychology of mirror and 19th century oil painting and the science of nostalgia" among other super intriguing topics!

That's all for today; hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with more tidbits. If you're attending AWP in person or virtually, what are some pieces of advice you're gleaning that you're finding helpful?

Neither of these are the physical book fair, but they are *both* at the #AWPVirtualbookfair!

Last year around this time, Michael and I traipsed about Portland for AWP, skirting the conference itself, simply enjoying off-site readings and the book fair on Saturday. It was a lovely way to round out our time in the Pacific Northwest.

This year, because of our move, I never had any intentions of going to the conference in San Antonio, but because of the coronavirus, lots of folks, including my publisher Lanternfish Press have cancelled their trips. Because small presses depend on AWP each year for sales, a virtual book fair has been set up as a Google Doc by Trevor Ketner, publisher of Skull + Wind Press, inspired by poets G. Calvocoressi, Dana Levin, and Greg Pardlo. Now folks can browse from afar, and check out the many beautiful books and journals on sale here at #AWPVirtualBookfair. In random scrolling through the virtual book fair, I came across this intriguing book of poetry, Goodbye Wolf, by Nik De Dominic. Most discount codes are good through Sunday. Lanternfish Press is offering 30% off all of their books (including Daughters of the Air); use the code AWP2020.

Another press I love that has cancelled its trip to San Antonio is Fairy Tale Review. Their newest issue, back issues, subscriptions, and the complete set of issues are 20% off. Use code AWP20. The title story of my in-progress story collection, "More Like Home Than Home," is in their Wizard of Oz-themed Emerald Issue. It's set in Brooklyn in the 1980s and is a potpourri of the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Twelve Dancing Princesses.

But what is a book fair without getting to pick up a book and open it at random? Below is random page from Daughters of the Air (you can read the opening over at Tin House). Beneath that, a taste of what all is in FTR's Emerald Issue.

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Stay healthy out there! Enjoy yer book browsing & book reading!

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This past weekend was my sixth time attending the AWP conference. My first was in New York in 2008, an overwhelming affair of 8,000 writers crammed into a couple Midtown hotels. That year, I sat on the floor beside a woman from Texas Tech who thought my plan to wait five years before getting an MFA was absurd. The next thing I knew, I was working as a paralegal to save money for graduate school, and by August 2009, I had a full ride to the University of Washington and Michael and I moved cross-country to Seattle. You could say that AWP changed our life pretty radically.

Over the years, we went to a smattering of conferences, but each year I went to fewer and fewer panels, as they tend to repeat and I learned you can only soak up so much information. In 2015 in Minneapolis, I mostly had lunch and dinner with friends, a most pleasant experience, but I'd realized the conference fee had been a waste. Next time, I resolved, I would go to AWP without going to AWP.

Last year in Tampa, with my novel just out, I didn't get to do that. But *this* year, in Portland, it finally happened, and I highly recommend it to folks who've been around the AWP block. I was more relaxed. More hydrated! I had time to stay on top of my online teaching, so less stressed.

Now for some highlights:

Wednesday night, we started at The Old Portland, a wine bar owned by Courtney Taylor-Taylor of the Dandy Warhols. They only serve old French wine; I misheard the description of the Corsican rosé as "foggy" and enjoyed it very much; Michael enjoyed a ten-year-old red Bordeaux. Then, the very Portland-y (more stoner than twee Portlandia) bartender said, "Yeah, we don't like advertise or anything," and showed us the Odditorium, the band's 10,000-foot "clubhouse," where they rehearse, record, film music videos, and the like. It was cavernous and quiet. Michael, a big Dandy Warhols fan, was in heaven.

"Ice Cream," the mono-print I made at VSC when I was sad that the ice cream shop had closed and there was no ice cream to be had.

Thursday afternoon, we went to the Vermont Studio Center alumni happy hour. I'd finished a first draft of Daughters of the Air there back in 2007. Three former literary staff read poetry from their recent releases. A line from Nandi Comer's American Family: A Syndrome: "If there is blood, the artist has chosen to omit it." Ryan Walsh spoke of the connection between visual art and writing at VSC (I still cherish learning how to make a mono-print there) and vegetable poems. Zayne Turner read from "Her Radioactive Materials."

Most of the other readings I attended featured numerous readers, so, forthwith, more of a collage:

Reading "Cauliflower Tells You"

At Strange Theater: A Fabulist Reading, there were spiders and trousseaus and swans roasted in revenge and Japanese monsters and red rooms and porcine men and tyrants and cauliflower-fueled murder. A doll's head was raffled off, among other trinkets; I offered a rare talisman of Cyndi Lauper's trip to Yemen.

Friday, we went to the PageBoy Magazine Happy Hour, featuring 17-word poems and prose. It was a fun afternoon of zingy one-liners and dreamy experimental works and Gertrude Stein jokes. Then we were off to Literary Bingo with Lilla Lit, a new Portland-based reading series; it was fast and furious with four-minute readings (a loud buzzer ushered off writers going over). Chocolate was pelted at every shout of "bingo!"; I caught a peanut-butter ball overhead with my left hand and won a copy of Jennifer Perrine's In the Human Zoo. I also read a poem and someone won a copy of Daughters of the Air. All readings should have strict word and time limits and buzzers and prizes!

Saturday, we paid $5 to get into the convention center book fair. I had a lovely time chatting with Chicago-based folks in advance of our move (yes! big news tucked away over here; more on that in a future post), signing books at the Lanternfish Press table, and seeing fellow LFP authors Charles J. Eskew (Tales of the Astonishing Black Spark) and Andrew Katz (The Vampire Gideon's Suicide Hotline and Halfway House for Orphaned Girls). It was also super cool meeting Carmen Maria Machado, who signed Her Body and Other Parties and Carmilla, an LFP reprint of a lesbian vampire romance that predates Dracula, with a Borgesian introduction and footnotes by Machado.

Fun!

We also picked up a whole slew of poetry in translation (from Romanian and Hebrew), essays on art, novels, short story collections. I can't wait to read it all! Our last stop was the Northwest Micropress Fair at the Ace Hotel, where I signed copies of Sugar, my chapbook from Chin Music Press, and hung out with regional small presses, which felt like a special little send off before we leave the Pacific Northwest.

I heard that the conference had ballooned to 12,000 (15,000?) attendees. Amazing! Perhaps, perhaps, we'll be in San Antonio next year, and if not San Antonio, Kansas City, and if not Kansas City, Philadelphia...?

I'm back home after a whirlwind book tour that ended with AWP in Tampa. Michael and I drove up from Delray Beach through the Everglades, hoping to spot alligators, and though there were none, pelicans abounded.We arrived in time for me to catch one panel Thursday afternoon, "Difficult History: Jewish Fiction in the Alt-Right World," which began with brief readings from each panelist. Emily Barton read from The Book of Esther, an alternate history in which a Turkic Jewish warrior state that disappeared in the Middle Ages existed into August 1942. Simone Zelitch read from her novel Judenstaat, another alternate history, this one set in 1980 in the Jewish sovereign state established in the province of Saxony in 1948. Amy Brill read from Hotel Havana, about Jewish refugees in Havana in the 1930s and '40s, highlighting the fresh pain German Jews felt compared to Polish Jews, since Polish Jews had always been considered Jewish rather than Polish, whereas German Jews had thought of themselves as German. And Irina Reyn read from a work-in-progress ending on this note: "A Russian woman doesn't wait. A Russian woman acts."On the question of what is Jewish fiction, Zelitch quoted a character of hers: "We don't bow down. We cross borders. We remember." Reyn recalled her unhappy Jewish day school experience as a Russian immigrant who never felt she belonged (I totally related to this, being neither a "real" American or Israeli at my elementary school); she said, "Jewish fiction is constant negotiation: where do you belong?" Brill remarked that as a reform Jew who went to Sunday school and never really understood her bat mitzvah asked: how do you handle writing a character that is either less than or more than your own religiosity? Barton said that for The Book of Esther she generated 90 questions and found a rabbi willing to discuss them all with her; then she showed the finished manuscript to another rabbi. She said that after revision and publication she still got things weirdly wrong. Oy! On the question of how much to explicate for the reader, Barton said she wants Christian Americans to know what's like to be a religious minority: "I looked up pentecost; you can look up havdallah."Barton also made a point I feel strongly about (and have written about in Salon and Jewish in Seattle): it is important to revisit history and re-enliven it. Alternate history, she suggested, is one way to get around Holocaust fatigue. Zelitch added, "Judaism has to be more than the Holocaust and Israel," that we should look to the international Jewish experience and the refugee crisis. Reyn then touched on "diasporic anxiety," the need to be more Jewish than you really are in order to connect with Jews in a new place (again, something I totally relate to since moving to Seattle from New York, and touched on in an essay for The Rumpus). Zelitch added that today dystopian fiction seems like a cop out and the challenge is to write engaging utopian fiction, that we need to see powerless people taking power and people need to lose themselves in this kind of story. Before opening up the discussion to audience questions, Brill said: "The arc of justice is not necessarily moving on its own. We need to push it."It was certainly an invigorating panel! One or two more posts to come...

I am pleased with how fitting it is to have an essay called "How to Finish a Novel in Only 15 Years" in The Nervous Breakdown today. Here's how it begins:

1.  Choose a horrific moment in history you know little about, in a country, Argentina, you know little about, but which seems to have troubling similarities to the here and now. Research for years. Images from the Dirty War sear into your mind.continue reading

In other news, I made a handy-dandy card with all of my upcoming out-of-Seattle readings (as always everything is on my appearances page).Huzzah!

Caveat # 1: I am an L.A. ingenue!Caveat #2: I'm not even going to AWP this year!But...I happen to be here right now, on a writing retreat while M takes a class for work, and I so enjoyed writing my little food guide to Seattle for the 2014 AWP, I thought I'd give this another spin, albeit with outsider humility.I write to you from the Los Angeles Public Library cafe, which offers a Panda Express, TCBY, and a vendor called Food 630 which is closed and obscured by some potted plants. The scent of orange chicken is bringing me right back to my teenage field trips to the Staten Island Mall. Not incidentally, the downtown library has been a great place to hunker down and work. Free WiFi is not as ubiquitous here as in Seattle, but at the LAPL, the world is your oyster. I love libraries.But,  I digress. Where do you eat? If you're like me, downtown and car averse, there are several great options.For breakfast, I cannot quit Pitchoun, a French bakery that will surely kill me. So far, I've enjoyed a plain brioche sprinkled with otherworldly-large crystals of sugar; a Kouign-Amann, more luscious than a croissant and oozing with syrup; a banana chocolate chip muffin, because, you know, it had some fruit on it; a pain au chocolat; and an almond croissant. Opt for the Kouign-Amann. It's special.As a New York transplant, I was very pleased to find Wexler's Deli in the Grand Central Market.They smoke their own lox and pastrami masterfully. Their bagel is crunchier and less dense than a New York bagel, but it maintains a chewiness that saves it from being round bread with a hole in it. I did wonder whether there is an L.A.-style bagel, distinct from the holy New York and Montreal varieties. Indeed, this L.A. Weekly article confirms. If I were to return, I'd opt for corned beef on rye with a schmear of mustard and a pickle, which, I suspect, would hit a spot the bagel just so slightly missed. If deli food is not your thing, there are a bajillion other vendors at the market hawking foods of all kinds.Chelsea Kurnick introduced M & me to B.S. Taqueria, the casual sister to fancy pants Broken Spanish. The lemon-pepper chicken skin chicharrones were tasty, and I would venture to say you should go there just for the outstanding rice & beans, flavorful with fresno chilis & cotija & delightfully crunchy thanks to rice being toasted. I enjoyed my tongue tacos, but next time I'd try the clam and lardo. (The Duritos, alas, were much too spicy for me.)An easy Metro ride up into Hollywood brought M & I up to the old-school gem Musso & Frank, which is not cheap but not as expensive as I'd feared. An elderly barkeep in a red jacket made me a $10 gin martini, with a carafe of excess drink thoughtfully stowed in a little bucket of ice. The clams & linguine dish was well worth the $22 price tag and a side creamed spinach brought me right back to 1987.Thanks to Kima Jones, I did eat *some* fresh vegetables this week at Bäco Mercat: deeply satisfying "caesar" brussels sprouts and a delightful sugar snap pea & pear salad. Kima urged me to dig deep into the salad, lest I miss out on the heavenly layer of burrata at the bottom. Seattleites will also kvell at the bicycle-powered ice cream parlor, Peddler's Creamery.We ventured up to Mohawk Bend in Silver Lake, a $5 shared uber ride, for beer,  buffalo cauliflower, and a garlicky white mushroom pizza that was very good. This spot is great for vegans; everything on the menu is vegan unless otherwise indicated.For a down to earth meal close to the convention center, check out The Original Pantry Cafe, a 24-hour cash-only diner established in 1924. My dad has been going there every year for the last 30 years, "a good meat and potatoes" place. I had Portuguese sausage & eggs, incredibly savory and rich,  which plunged me into a pleasant food coma.For an entirely different experience, and a good escape from the conference, take the Expo Line to Culver City for the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Fabulists will love the exhibits on old superstitions, pseudo-science, and other tantalizing mysteries. (There's a whole room dedicated to Soviet space dogs!) The rooftop garden is a magical oasis, where you'll be offered tea out of a samovar, doves flutter under billowing awnings, fountains burble, and an abundance of ferns, palms, and birds of paradise will sooth your overtaxed eyes. Many thanks to Sean Michaels for the stellar suggestion.That's all kids. Play safe. Eat well. While you're at the conference I'll just be up here in Seattle sitting in the rain, munching on kale. 

Behold, Seattle's gloriously long spring, stretching from February to late June. In my youth, the colors of my birthday month featured gray slush and the unnatural blue icing on Carvel ice cream cakes. Now, there is a profusion of pink in all the azaleas, rhododendrons, early cherry blossoms, meaty camellias.Speaking of meat, I'm reading at a"Moveable Feast" themed reading on Saturday, March 5 at 7 pm, alongside my fellow Jack Straw'ster Bernard Grant and Emily Holt. They're promising a themed cocktail and open mic to follow, so come have a drink and bring food-themed work to share. This will be at a private home in Madrona on 34th and Columbia, as a part of the roving Makeshift Reading Series. Incidentally, this is also the second time I'm reading at a private home, which is just a lovely experience. A few weeks ago, I read at a party Artist Trust threw for me (!), hosted by Gar LaSalle. It was surreal and delightful and an honor. Pictures here!Then on Wednesday, April 6 at 7 pm, I'm reading at the third anniversary edition of Lit Fix at Chop Suey, alongside Anastacia Tolbert, Michelle Peñaloza, Sean Beaudoin, Gint Aras, and acoustic solo project The Wild. I'll be reading nonfiction, a genre I've been diving deeper into in the last year or so, and which I've never performed before.Lastly, on Wednesday, April 13, I'm returning to Castalia, the University of Washington MFA program's monthly series at Hugo House. Details on the line up to come!I'll have copies of my chapbook I Loved You in New York on hand at each of these readings, for $5. You can also get them from alice blue books at the APRIL book expo on March 20, at AWP in Los Angeles March 31-April 2, or via Etsy.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

I picked up Alexandra Kollontai's Love of Worker Bees at Boneshaker Books during the AWP conference in Minneapolis. Usually, I skip a book's introduction, dive right into the fiction, and read the introduction afterwards. Kollontai's work is a rare look at the Russian Revolution, and since I'm also reading Dr. Zhivago, I wanted to get some background on her. This may have marred my reading experience.

The introduction made me crave reading more history, and perhaps Kollontai's nonfiction. Her fiction served to illustrate the feminist causes she fought for, and so in reading the short story "Sisters" I felt biased against the artistry of the story, about "a deserted wife and a prostitute who find a common bond." (Let me back up and say I think if the explicit aim of the writer is to illustrate a political cause, it would be more effective to write nonfiction. That isn't to say fiction must be apolitical. Pretty much all art is political. I believe a fiction writer should make story primary. The politics arising out of the story tend to emerge in a more complex, satisfying way when you don't set out to illustrate a specific agenda. Let the story drive.)

Set in the 1920s, "Sisters" is a frame story in which someone at a "delegates conference" is being confided in. The storyteller has left her husband, has nowhere to go, and fears she may have to resort to prostitution. After her daughter's illness, she was laid off from her job. Her husband, an executive in a government trust company, has taken to coming home drunk. She would like to work and he would like her to stay home. Things get worse when their daughter dies; he brings prostitutes home. The woman is horrified, humiliated, ready to run the second prostitute out of their house--but she sees a desperation in this sad young woman's eyes, and as they talk, realizes she is an educated young woman without money or shelter, starving, anguished. The storyteller realizes that if she hadn't been married, she'd be in a similar situation. She leaves her husband and...is at risk at being in the same situation. The story illustrates a pressing issue that Kollontai had to fight for relentlessly, that women's rights are an essential part of the revolution. She ended up in diplomatic exile for much of her adult life.

The story is affecting, in the way that if someone you met told you that story you would care and be concerned, and want to do something. So in this way, the story achieves a goal. However, the story is mostly told in summary, in the way that someone might relate their tale in real life, not told in scene, with the kind of sensory detail that draws you closer to the humanity of the characters. It feels one step removed. And so I didn't love the story, and I wouldn't press it upon anyone unless they were digging into the subject matter--the issues of feminism and Communism, the struggles of people living in Russia after the Revolution. I'll add as another caveat that is the third piece in the book. I did not read the first two and do wonder if the book is "front loaded" with stronger stories. So take my lack of enthusiasm with a grain of salt, check it out if it intrigues you, and let me know what you think.

This series on Women in Translation continues next week with a Duras novella and will finish at the end of August with a couple surprise books of contemporary poetry, review copies I was delighted to receive in the mail.

This year, AWP has been schmoozier, in a pleasant way, as I spent more time with readings, receptions, and lunch/coffee/dinner dates and less time with panels and the book fair. We took a break from the conference Friday night to see Mr. Burns at the Gutherie Theater, an apocalyptic play spanning from the near future to 75 years into the future, in which the surviving population tries to retell and recreate episodes from The Simpsons (particularly the "Cape Fear" episode) as a way of coping. Over time, The Simpsons evolves into totally weird, wonderful, and scary mythology. I highly recommend it!The two panels I attended were excellent, and I'm posting my notes right over here:Small is the New Big: Working with Independent Presses to Build a Literary CareerModerator: Michelle Brower, agent at Folio Literary ManagementPanelists: Molly Fuller, Production Editor of Coffee House Press; Ethan Nosowsky, Editorial Director of Graywolf Press; Erin Harris, agent at Folio Literary Management; and Cal Morgan, Executive Editor of Harper and Editorial Director of Harper Perennial.

• Access to early and frequent publication (such as online) has allowed an enormous amount of creativity. Adventurous small presses are publishing successful works, and big houses are discovering writers earlier as a result.   -Cal Morgan
• Small presses take on books that might not seem readily marketable from a big publisher's perspective, but can maximize those books' audiences.                    -Ethan Nosowsky
• Small presses can facilitate reviews that build the writer's readership.     -Erin Harris
• The reputation and backlist of a small press have cultural capital.                           -Molly Fuller
• Small presses are also an opportunity for seasoned authors to try something new. -Michelle Brower
• Many authors who work with both small and big presses are big supporters of new writers and facilitate connections.                               -Cal Morgan
• It was a relief to hear all the panelists are avid readers of small press books!

Examples of successes:

• Eiomear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, published by Coffee House after the author spent 10 years trying to get it published and being told the publishers loved it but thought readers wouldn't enjoy it. You may already know the book is enormously successful. 
• Erin Harris found short story writer Stacy Tintocalis after reading her collection The Tiki King, published by Swallow Press, an imprint of Ohio University Press, and discovered Brian Furuness, author of The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson (Dzanc) after reading two of his stories in literary magazines.
• Graywolf Press published a 20-year retrospective of Geoff Dyer's essays and was able to do so  successfully based on its backlist of essay collections.
• Cal Morgan discovered Blake Butler after publishing his short stories in the blog Fifty-Two Stories; he went on to publish three books from Butler, and Butler connected him to more authors.

It's a Crime to Skip this Panel: Approaches to Crime Fiction(Nb. The authors on this panel have multiple books out--see the link above for a more expansive list.)Moderator: Michael Kardos, author of Before He Finds Her.Panelists: Joy Castro, author of Hell or High Water; Chris Abani, author of Secret History of Las Vegas; Christopher Coake, author of You Came Back; Lori Rader-Day, author of The Black Hour.

• Much of great literature (Beloved, The Great Gatsby) spins around a crime. -Michael Kardos
• Joy Castro explores the chasm between the ideal of legal justice and its reality. She asks: whose law? To control whose bodies is the law written? Who is permitted to get away with crime? Who isn't? How does the aftermath manifest?
• The best suspense comes from characters: embed them with contradictions and set them loose. Don't choose a main character who knows everything.    -Joy Castro
• Misdirections and clues should all arise from point of view: different characters will pick up on different things. -Lori Rader-Day
• Think of pacing as interval training, alternating between intense, fast-paced, action-packed scenes and more quiet, emotional scenes. -Joy Castro
• Every story is a riddle. Stories trace an outline for the riddle of living. We don't care about characters who are not fucked up.       -Chris Abani
• Good art sets out to do something and does it. That's all there is. There are no genres. -Chris Abani
• Finding the voice of the novel is key to finding the novel. -Joy Castro
• Structure is the skeleton of a book. Voice is its soul, its reason for existence. -Chris Abani
• If you're a surgeon and remove the wrong kidney, that's bad. You have so many opportunities to get your book right.                             -Michael Kardos

On research:

• Read two books then close your eyes. -Christopher Coake
• Write the book before you do research, then research what you need to know. -Lori Rader-Day
• Research a lot then forget it. Don't write with your notes open; the divine details will come to you. -Joy Castro (My preferred approach...I love research and tend to pick stories that require it.)
• The only question you need is "Why?" -Chris Abani

Book Fair Loot!I sprinted through the book fair in the last 45 minutes on Saturday. I managed to get something from every genre, as well something from every "genre" of book fair stuff: freebies, cheapies, full price-ys, a notepad, bookmarks, and even an adorable pinwheel from Pacifica Literary Review, fashioned from pages of poetry.I'm also happy to discover that Twitter *can* work for authors. Shulem Deem, author of the memoir All Who Go Do Not Return (Graywolf Press) followed me on Twitter several months ago; I was intrigued by the premise of his memoir, which is about leaving the Hasidic Jewish community; and his was the first book I bought at the fair. Can't wait to read it.See you in L.A. in 2016!

Every year around this time, my post on finding a literary agent at AWP gets more hits. And thus I'm reminded that I will be attending the conference again. I love the Twin Cities, and Mike and I are doubling up with a visit to his dad, so my approach will be considerably chill. I probably won't have time to visit the Walker Art Center, one of my favorite museums (in the world?), but my chief goals include: multiple visits to Cecil's Deli for Jewish food and a fleeting drive-by glimpse of the Paisley Palace. The Minnesota Center for Book Arts is also well worth another visit.Blintzes, books, and Prince--what could be better?I do have some literary events:

• Thursday night at 8:15 pm at The Nicollet, I'm reading at Literary Wilderness, a benefit for prison writing programs around the country. The theme is is WILDERNESS, so be prepared!
• Saturday afternoon, 3-5 pm at Boneshaker Books, I'm reading with the Cambridge Writers' Workshop, which accepted a batch of my writing prompts into their CREDO Anthology.

And a number of panels caught my eye:Thursday

• Small is the New Big: Working With Independent Presses to Build a Literary Career
• No Shame: Sex Scenes by Women, About Women

Friday

• Ekphrasis Goes Prose
• Chekhov’s Gun: How to Make Surprise Suspenseful
• It's a Crime to Skip This Panel

Saturday

• Yes, Writing Is a Job: People Who Get Paid to Write
• Historical Fiction and Fictional History
• Fascinated or Haunted: Why We Continue to Write & Rewrite Fairy Tales

For last year's book fair, I had a laser beam focus on small presses to submit my first novel to. This year, I don't have that particular laser beam, or any particular laser beam. I'm sure I'll come home with an unwieldy pile of books and I'm sure I'll pile up their spines in a picture, right here, just for you.

Forgive my hyperbole, but I really enjoyed AWP this year. Maybe it was because this was the fourth I attended, so it was less overwhelming. Maybe it was because it was in Seattle, so I got to see so many friends and sleep in my own bed. Maybe it was because I had a chance to read alongside some really lovely writers. Maybe it was because I got to bring M to the book fair on Saturday and he made many tired exhibitors laugh. I *did* have violent heart palpitations the weekend before the conference as I stressed out over the three readings I had, but somehow these subsided by Tuesday, and by Thursday it was one big love fest. Here are some highlights.Notes on the PracticalOn Thursday I attended Kristen Young's panel Like Sand to a Beach: Bringing Your Book to Market. Jarrett Middleton of Dark Coast Press gave a really informative overview of the publishing process, especially when it comes to distribution. I had no idea how scary a pre-sales conference is (when a publisher pitches the merits of a title to all the big guns of a distributor and they try to poke holes in your marketing plan). I also didn't know that a book has about 90 days or one quarter in a bookstore before it gets returned to the warehouse. Karen Maeda Allman of Elliott Bay Book Company gave the bookseller's perspective. My favorite advice of hers about author events is to "invite everyone you know, encourage them to bring friends, and invite your 'Kevin Bacon' friend--the one who knows everyone." All of her presentation slides are available on this beautiful Tumblr. Author Jonathan Evison emphasized building communities and taking the time to invite friends individually to your events rather than through mass emails. He also said, "Even if only six people come to your B & N event in south Austin, take the events coordinator to the Cheesecake Factory afterwards and get her drunk. She'll keep selling your books." Finally, Rachel Fershleiser of Tumblr gave an overview her experiences as a book publicist and of what she calls the "bookternet" -- smart people being silly on the internet with sites like Last Night's Reading.A Controversial PanelFriday morning I attended the panel Magic and Intellect. It was packed to the gills; magic must be popular! Something extraordinary occurred at this panel that so far one blogger I know of has recounted and it is worthwhile to read her account. I hope more people will write on it. I haven't had the mind space to do so; I'm still processing. But I did come away from it feeling affirmed, that imaginative writing is necessary. Rikki Ducornet said, "The human mind & imagination cannot sustain itself in a constant state of emergency," and Kate Bernheimer said, "Solutions in fairy tales often require radical acts. If you're in an incestuous, abusive relationship, you might need to cut off your finger to use as a key to get out of a room." And Rikki Ducornet offered this advice: "For a difficult book to be readable, 'find a language that levitates somehow, that is scintillating'" (last quotation via Mackenzie Hulton on Twitter).One Really Cool Thing from the Book Fair: Envisioning the Future of the BookI cannot begin to describe the many, many books I acquired last week. So I will simply share one very cool thing, Columbia College Chicago's Center for Book & Paper Expanded Artists' Books. They displayed a hybrid artist book with heat-sensitive ink and an embedded iPad; if you pressed your hand on the page, different words erased and different words appeared on the iPad. What alchemy.Readings GaloreI had the pleasure of reading fairy tales with Maya Sonenberg, Rikki Ducornet, and Valerie Arvidson. I was pleasantly surprised to see a fairly large room fill with people eager to hear stories. Somehow each of us included food in our stories--I hurriedly jotted the phrase "saffron buns and candied salmon" as Valerie read--and that made me immensely happy.At Canoe Social Club, I read with Andrew Ladd, Michael Nye, and Wesley Rothman. I'd finished Andrew's book What Ends Tuesday night and it had me sobbing by the end. In addition to making me think about the issues that got me crying, it got me thinking about the books that also made me cry like that--Sophie's Choice, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn-- so maybe I'll write a separate post on that topic. I picked up Michael's story collection Strategies Against Extinction; of course I will read the story "Sparring Vladimir Putin" first because obviously. I can't wait. Wesley is working on a collection that may be called Sub-Woofer--keep your ears peeled!Chris Abani and Chang-rae Lee did a wonderful reading and conversation. I already read The Secret History of Las Vegas (it's powerful!), but hearing Chris read the opening and another section concerned with fairy tales gave me shivers.I got to read with 13 others affiliated with the Univesity of Washington MFA and  the Cambridge Writers Workshop. We filled up Victrola's back room and then most of us retired to Coastal Kitchen for drinks, snacks, and exquisite corpse. Coincidentally, I sat beside someone I'd only known through twitter and had no idea would be there. The future is now!In the lovely subterranean Alibi Room, I got to see the UNC-Wilmington alumni reading, which featured several friends and which introduced me to the wonderful work of Rochelle Hurt and Kate Sweeney. You should check out their respective books, The Rusted City and American Afterlife. Finally, read Paul Constant's take on the conference here, which includes high praise for my Furnace co-conspirator Corinne Manning and her Alice Blue chapbook "A Slow and Steady Eruption." Hooray!

There's a lot of advice floating around for dealing with AWP  (I love Kelli Russell Agodon's). And while AWP may be overwhelming, eating in Seattle doesn't have to be. Four years into moving here from Brooklyn, I still marvel at the happy hours truly being happy, and while sometimes the food seems more expensive than food in New York (strange, I know), there's plenty to enjoy on a tight budget. My suggestions are somewhat geographically biased, seeing as I never learned to drive. Without further ado, some suggestions for your eating and drinking pleasure.Update: I've been chided for omitting a few very delicious establishments, two of which are close to my heart (Ezell's, Rancho Bravo) and one of which gives me heart burn (Dick's). Consider the guide amended!The Pike/Pine AreaBest coffee, light, and glossy French magazines: Cafe PresseMost decent slice of pizza: Big Mario'sBest place to look hip and eat any meal of the day: Odd Fellows (bonus: proximity to literary mothership Richard Hugo House and book sanctuary Elliott Bay Books; nb. entrees not so cheap, but deviled eggs & $5 cocktails at happy hour are pretty wonderful)Best (only?) 24-hour diner: Lost Lake (bonus: proximity to Hugo House & Elliott Bay Books; nb. the service is slow; not recommended if you're in a hurry)Tastiest tacos & tamales: Rancho Bravo (bonus: way cheaper than Odd Fellows or Lost Lake AND a smidgen closer to Hugo House)Best Italian food in an old-timey setting: Machiavelli (bonus: this place is super close to the Convention Center; extra bonus: chicken liver lasagne!)Capitol HillBest drinking chocolate/ drinking goop: the ciocco breve, 72% dark, at Dilettante (ask for it extra goopy!)Coziest cafe with a great view of the historic Harvard Exit movie theater: Joe BarTastiest, prettiest lattes: VivaceBest "don't judge me" happy hour: Coastal Kitchen (a longtime local seafood joint with a rotating menu)Best-smelling, "life-changing" burger: Dick's (get the Deluxe!)First HillBest happy hour spot to feel like a '70s porn star: Vito'sClassiest hotel bar: The Sorrento's Fireside LoungeClosest thing I've found to the delis of my youth: George's (only open M-F, 9-5 & Sat 10-3)BelltownBest Bang-For-Your-Buck Sushi Happy Hour: WannChillest French bistro: Le PichetDowntownBest happy hour for throwing your elbows out and getting $1 oysters: The Brooklyn (nb. get there promptly at 4 pm if your elbows aren't pointy)Central DistrictTastiest spot for pho, frog legs, karaoke, and monkey bread, all in one place: Ba BarBest bordello-themed bar: The Neighbor LadyMost extensive selection of microbrews plus ice cream and gummi bears: Chuck's Hop ShopMost life-changing fried chicken: Ezell's (Johnny Horton says, "I recommend the spicy three piece.")MadronaHave a car? Fancy a long walk up a steep hill? Best place to enjoy a cozy brunch (and have a Portlandia moment, waiting in line for brunch): The Hi Spot******Best places to get someone else to pay: I recently tried and loved Rione XIII; people also seem to love Tom Douglas's restaurants.

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My story "More Like Home Than Home" is in the Emerald Issue of Fairy Tale Review. It is their 10th anniversary issue and Wizard of Oz-themed, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of Oz. I'm really excited to be a part of this issue. Over the years, FTR sent me two of the nicest, most encouraging rejections ever, and I know each issue is put together with a lot of love and care. I literally cried with joy when I saw the acceptance email, which is also probably the nicest acceptance email I've ever gotten. Every time I felt cold or down this winter, I just whispered to myself "Fairy Tale Review" and all was better. Many thanks to Kate Bernheimer and Timothy Schaffert and the editorial staff of MFA students at University of Arizona. You can order a copy here or pick one up at AWP at booth K26 in the North Hall.

This year, I get to go to AWP in my hometown for the second time. The first time was also my first time at AWP ever, in NYC. That was where I decided to apply for MFA programs because, as the nice woman I met there said, "You're helping no one by hating your job." Since that fateful, overwhelming experience, I went to the conference in D.C., bunking up with my MFA classmates in a fancy hotel room, and then to the one in Chicago, staying with my lovely mother-in-law and kvelling over the downtown Jewish deli she took M and I to, Manny's.Last spring, I went to a panel on proposing AWP panels at Richard Hugo House right after folks came back from the Boston AWP (which I skipped because a woman and her wallet needs a break). I proposed a panel that did not get accepted, but I also was fortunate enough to be on a panel that *did* (thank you, Maya Sonenberg!). So I am on my very first AWP panel. And to top it all off, I put together an off-site event to celebrate the release of my friend Andrew Ladd's debut novel, What Ends.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO: WHAT I'M DOING DURING AWP

Official panel description on AWP site

Facebook Invite (why not?)

Facebook Invite

Of course, there's so much more I'm doing, but these events are what I'm directly involved in. If you're curious about what other Hugo House instructors are up to, I compiled a list of panels for Hugo House's blog.And here's a few panels I'm most definitely excited to attend:

Like Sand to the Beach: Bringing Your Book to Market

Magic and the Intellect

 A Reading and Conversation with Chris Abani and Chang-rae Le

Are you going to AWP this year? What are you most excited to see and do?Stay tuned for my highly idiosyncratic gustatory guide to Seattle, for all your cheap food and drink needs.

Last night, I had a lovely time reading in Chelsea Kurnick's YouTube-based reading series The Casserole. I read from my novel Dirty alongside Andrew Ladd, whose novel What Ends won the 2012 AWP award and will be published in January 2014 by New Issues Press and in August 2014 by Oneworld in the UK. As you'll hear in the reading, Andrew's writing is beautiful and the scope of his novel impressive and compelling. I'm looking forward to reading with him in person at our off-site event during the AWP conference in Seattle: Thursday, February 27, at 8 pm, at Eltana. Why Eltana? Well, Andrew and I met in a writing group in Montreal when we both attended McGill University. It's nice to have a bit of Montreal in Seattle via the Montreal-style bagels of Eltana. Also, the space is lovely.

But, back to The Casserole. What a neat idea! Chelsea has also featured two other writer friends and co-conspirators of mine, Corinne Manning and Kristen Young. Corinne read a hilarious short story, "Professor M," from her wonderful collection-in-progress. Watch for her forthcoming chapbook from Alice Blue Books' Shotgun Wedding Series, out later this fall, and read her gut-punching-beautiful novel excerpt in Drunken Boat. Kristen read an excerpt from her ambitious, layered novel Subduction, which is ultimately about "wanting more than we have, longing to belong, and choosing, only to lament our choices." Watch for an excerpt in the December issue of City Arts Magazine.

Here's the video from my reading with Andrew:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RiqSDmNNNM

After the Tin House conference, M. and I went to New York to visit family and get our fill of art and food. We structured our visit around three bizarre-sounding art exhibits: Matthew Barney's drawings at the Morgan Library, Paul McCarthy's massive installation at the Park Avenue armory, and Jane Alexander's eerie sculptures at St. John the Divine.Barney's drawings were often framed in "self-lubricating" plastic, which was fascinating in and of itself, and sometimes more  interesting than the faint, conceptual sketches contained within. Most intriguing in this exhibit were his copies of Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings, heavily marked up, cut up, splashed with gold leaf. This is part of his newest project, "River of Fundament," a seven-part "opera" drawing on  Mailer's novel of Ancient Egypt and the Egyptian Book of the Dead and transposing it to 20th century American car culture."WS," McCarthy's exhibit, took up the entire armory with projections and sculptures of Snow White, the seven dwarves, and Walt Disney in an extremely debauched frat party. The set from the projected film took up the center of the armory, and you could walk around it, peeking into windows, catching sight of some very disturbing after-the-party messes. An enchanted forest lay beyond the house, and you couldn't quite walk inside of it, but just below it, which was unsettling, along with the fact that trees intentionally resembled turds. And in side galleries, a series of other films with the same characters included food porn and  a naked Snow White accosting Walt Disney's mouth with a bar of soap. It was an impressive production, though I regret bringing my mother.The most moving and complex was “Jane Alexander: Surveys (From the Cape of Good Hope)," which explores the legacy of Apartheid. Tucked away in various chapels at the back of St. John the Divine, these child-sized beast-human sculptures were strange and haunting. I half-expected them to start moving around and addressing me. Because of a calendar error, we caught the show on its last-last day, as it was being packed up, so it was doubly strange to see these small creatures being put into crates. Particularly arresting was "Security." It featured a large wingless bird enclosed in razor-wire inside a courtyard that was once the north transept of the church before the roof burned down in 2001. Surrounded by red rubber work gloves and rusting machetes and sickles and standing atop wheat and earth, the bird is watched over, sort of, by a dull-eyed, monkey-like "Custodian" perched on a window sill and a pointing "Monkey Boy". The New York Times has a photo gallery here.***In other news, I'm very happy to be on a panel at the 2014 AWP in Seattle! I will be reading at "New Fairy Tales from the North" with Maya Sonenberg, Valerie Arvidson, and Rikki Ducornet. The panel description begins with this choice Angela Carter quote from "The Werewolf":

"It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts."