AWP Folks

This AWP blog is slow and possibly cursed. I am now crawling out from a fluish haze, but I don't care if I finish it on the plane to Chicago, I will finish this blog. With John Irving, as my witness, I will finish this blog.

Which brings us to the people of AWP. There are the famous (who knows what this means for authors) writers there, who you seldom see any of if you aren't equally famous or you can't get into their reading. Ha Jin visited his publisher (early works) who were tabled next to us. Robert Olen Butler told us we had beautiful books. (I didn't recognize him, I just saw his nametag.) This is partially my fault. I didn't go to any sessions this AWP- I was far too interested in doing NYC things rather than being talked at things. But there is a weird hierarchy to the whole event. MFA folks, publishers, independent publishers (hurrah us!) university presses, journals, magazines, etc. etc. Everyone's got a place.

We did meet lots of interesting folks there. On one side we had Bound Off, that does short story/flash fiction podcasts out of Iowa City. http://boundoff.com/about.html Kelly and Ann were great neighbors, even though they never finished my socks. They offered knitting lessons and had one of those funky laptops designed to provide computer access to poorer kids in sub-saharan Africa. Good work that they fund because they are interested and the 2 of them tabled the whole thing all by themselves.

We were visited by royalty as well you can see. Ms. Small Press Distribution 2008 ladies and gentlemen, Jill Essbaum, author of Harlot on No Tell Books. http://www.notellbooks.org/ It features a large cock on the cover (her description, not mine, although I'd probably say the same thing). I'm now committed to only having my picture taken with women wearing tiaras.

Mostly AWP is nice because you get to see folks you already know and meet a few others. I see the Wave Books boys here, who I got to meet when they came through Durham on the Poetry Bus Tour, I usually see some MFA folks from UNC-Greensboro, and other poets scattered to the wind.

OK, the flu medicine's taking over again, so I'll finish this later this week.