AWP-Bound!
I'm getting very excited about the AWP conference in Chicago next week. If you're a writer and you've never been, you've got to think about going some time. (Maybe in 2010 in Denver?)
Imagine 7,000-7,500 enthusiastic, neurotic writers descending upon a few square blocks of a city and eating, drinking, and gabbing for four days. Imagine a book exhibit as big as your local Target. Imagine meeting writers you've admired for years. It's great, overwhelming fun--and then, once you're utterly wrung out, you get the pleasure of going home.
Shameless plug: The panel I'm on is about memoir, invention, and trauma. Here's how the clever organizers, Madeline Wiseman and Kelly Gray Carlisle, describe it:
It's on Thursday, February 12th at noon in the Lake Ontario room in the snazzy Hilton Chicago. If you're going to be at the conference, drop in and hear us hash this over. And stick around afterwards to say hello!
Tonight, I'm going to my first kirtan, and I'm excited about that, too. Over this weekend, I'll be reading and ranking an insane number of graduate application files to UNL's Ph.D. program in creative writing--we got even more apps this year, and they're terrific--and revising a new essay for Fourth Genre, so I'll need all the ojas I can get!
--Oh, almost forgot! If you will be at AWP and would like a party favor, drop by Fourth Genre's table in the book exhibit: booth 491 in the NW Hall, lower level. Apparently (I'm trying not to count my chickens), Fourth Genre has selected my micro-essay "Grip" to feature on their brochure (something like those ones The Sun sends out, I was told), and there'll be a thousand copies available for free. Woo-hoo!
Happy Valentine's Day! No gold, chocolate, or conflict diamonds, please. A nice book will do.
Imagine 7,000-7,500 enthusiastic, neurotic writers descending upon a few square blocks of a city and eating, drinking, and gabbing for four days. Imagine a book exhibit as big as your local Target. Imagine meeting writers you've admired for years. It's great, overwhelming fun--and then, once you're utterly wrung out, you get the pleasure of going home.
Shameless plug: The panel I'm on is about memoir, invention, and trauma. Here's how the clever organizers, Madeline Wiseman and Kelly Gray Carlisle, describe it:
Czeslaw Milosz said, "It is possible that there is no other memory than the memory of wounds." Our panel investigates the role of factual accuracy in memoir, why memoirists invent to improve the facts, and the difficulty in telling traumatic memory. What if research reveals conflicting truths? What is the cost of invention to the story? How do the psychological and physiological workings of memory, the act of writing, and the influence of the world outside the writer hinder or enrich the truth?I was really interested in the neurobiological aspects of trauma, so I did some research. My paper has actual science in it--shocking! (I get to say amygdala.)
It's on Thursday, February 12th at noon in the Lake Ontario room in the snazzy Hilton Chicago. If you're going to be at the conference, drop in and hear us hash this over. And stick around afterwards to say hello!
Tonight, I'm going to my first kirtan, and I'm excited about that, too. Over this weekend, I'll be reading and ranking an insane number of graduate application files to UNL's Ph.D. program in creative writing--we got even more apps this year, and they're terrific--and revising a new essay for Fourth Genre, so I'll need all the ojas I can get!
--Oh, almost forgot! If you will be at AWP and would like a party favor, drop by Fourth Genre's table in the book exhibit: booth 491 in the NW Hall, lower level. Apparently (I'm trying not to count my chickens), Fourth Genre has selected my micro-essay "Grip" to feature on their brochure (something like those ones The Sun sends out, I was told), and there'll be a thousand copies available for free. Woo-hoo!
Happy Valentine's Day! No gold, chocolate, or conflict diamonds, please. A nice book will do.
The Hilton Chicago
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