I tend to spill purple ink, but I no longer care much that I come off a smidgen sentimental. Here a few of my favorite things from AWP Washington: Caleb Ross A girl named Jen over the moon for Jhumpa My graduate school’s esprit de corps — both Goddard & Mizzou Learning   Read More ...

A Tweet @ joylandfiction Day 1 of #AWP11 = much like the rest of my life: Standing by self quietly peoplewatching; stealing candy; reading; watching others drink. This tweet pretty well summed up my first day at AWP, which so happened to be the second day of the conference; a   Read More ...

written at a bankrupt Borders somewhere on L Street because the conference site is void of free WiFi. By now you’ve noticed a few reoccurring things about AWP panels: There’s never enough water or coffee or candy nearby There are never enough handouts The presenters mostly seemed surprised to be   Read More ...

I go. But: For introverts and malcontents, like myself, competitive and conspiratorial introverts, conferences are a test of wills. I find the entire enterprise to be exhausting on so many levels I often chide a higher-ranking myself in mid-conference stream for having fooled a lower-ranking myself once again in attending.   Read More ...

Awaiting a flight to take me to the AWP conference in DC, I can’t help but think about the place of airports in my writing life. To me, airports present one ginormous prompt or at the very least a bunch of micro-prompts. Arrival and departures. All the people and their   Read More ...