Damn, AWP was good this year. Not too much booze, not too much running from venue to venue. Dinner with close friends. Dancing with Emily and Claudia. Three happy strolls through the book fair. I remembered almost all names and faces (sorry Walt; the beard really changes your look). I bought Ann Quin’s Three and Tlooth by Harry Mathews and finally got to see Sam Ligon read and I saw Adam Levin again (briefly met in Chicago two years ago, so happy to hear all the good press for Hot Pink). I saw Adam Robinson breakdance and gave him all the hugs. There are people I’m always really glad to see in life and one is Gene Morgan and one is Adam Robinson and another is Tim Sanders (come visit, idiot) and another is Lindsay Hunter and her husband Ben. It was cool to give Blake Butler a high five. Mike Young and I had a great talk about water in California on the way to the train. Oh and I saw Vanessa Place read and nearly cried and went over to say hello and made a happy ass out of myself, all sober. People said such kind things to me about the book, either that they were looking forward to it or that they had enjoyed it, and I appreciated all of that very much during this first week out the gate. Also I was careful not to mess up my new glasses. I didn’t suffer a single fool. Kyle Beachy hosted two solid parties and I only hid at the end of one, in a dark room, under a coat.
Archive for the 'Adam Robinson' Category
I’m beyond honored to be on the Indie Booksellers’ Choice Award longlist with Grace Krilanovich, Robert Lopez, Eugene Marten, Geroges Perec and more. I’m so proud and happy to play my small part in the vibrant, passionate independent bookseller world, which is so full of people who care deeply about writers and readers and books.
Also, please find Vol 1. of the What is Experimental Literature? project with Chris Higgs, which is becoming the first of a series I can’t wait to read.
I had an excellent past week, well worth this chest cold deal I’ve got going on today. The NYC trip was constant movement, both alone and alongside dear friends. I met my goal of coffee and pie with Sasha and Skyler, wine with Emily and Claudia and a few good, windy walks with Ryan. I signed a contract and went to two parties and met new friends Alex and Jayson and Ben and felt tempted for the first time to move to a city that has otherwise freaked me out for over ten years.
Then, I flew home, sat at my desk for half an hour and made the drive to Houston, where I met up with Adam and Tim and Gene and Jenny, and read at the good-time Houston Indie Book Festival. It was nice and warm and there was a hammock and I felt at peace and declared that I will never move away from the South.
(I’m feeling a little conflicted.)
Now I’m home-again home-again, eating tapioca and finally baking that loaf of bread I’ve been threatening to bake for weeks, getting back to the draft, making a grocery list, experiencing chest congestion, figuring stuff out, continuing correspondence, looking for a good yoga class &c.
SUCH BEAUTY.
My favorite parts of AWP included but were not limited to reading at the zoo (stories by Mike and Tim were highlights), reading at the literature party (holy crowd), then putting on my flats and dancing (always dance when the DJ brings groupies), sitting next to Jamie at the JMWW reading and hearing his good news, feeling like I was in many warm rooms with people I love both personally and professionally, saying hello to folks from FC2 and hearing their work, having a great meeting with Emily about the book, hangouts with old friends Tom and Charlie and new friend Amina, getting to know a few very kind and solicitous District residents (though what’s up with your waitresses, really), and seeing old friends from acronyms ASU and TSU and experiencing major hugs with my girls Mary and Lindsay and Jac and Sarah and Wolfe and seeing but not spending enough time seeing Zach and Aaron and Elizabeth and Matt and Gene and Jenny and Sasha and Molly and I missed doing some stuff and did some other stuff and found a cheese plate and there was simultaneously not enough time and far too much time with the cheese plate. Now I’m back home where it’s a temperature that properly sustains human life. As soon as I got back, my body put roots into the ground. I have eaten three tacos in two days and slept 12 hours. Good to see y’all. Back to work, y’all.
I took over the factory at Everyday Genius this week. Adam Robinson assigned me five constraints, each of which I completed immediately after opening my eyes each morning for maximum confusion/focus effect. Here are the pieces listed by constraint (please note, each day has an autoplay sound file embedded):
Day 1: Write under the table.
Day 2: Do you have a couch? It would be funny if you tried to squeeze yourself between the couch and the wall. If you don’t have a couch, your biggest chair would do.
Day 3: Standing in the shower, clothed, trying not to be hit with water.
Day 4: In bed, with your head at the other end (if you can sleep this way the night before, too, that would help a lot).
Day 5: While sitting on a small stack of AM/PM.
It is not always fun to write with constraints but the results are sometimes interesting. More info on the project here. Check over there each day this week and collect ‘em all. Thanks for being so great, Adam.
Interview and a little freewrite up at Dark Sky Magazine. Thanks to Ethel Rohan for the time and questions.
You know what’s cool? Bilingual homophonous poetry.
Denver happened. I yelled about driving an Iroc-Z in New Mexico for a restaurant reading with Matt Bell, Elena Passarello, Kevin Sampsell, Matthew Simmons, and Rachel Yoder. I marveled at Molly Gaudry‘s perfect twin braids and she said it was the work of her training as an only child. Mary and I bought the biggest dreamcatcher we could find and I read with it in an elevator. Lindsay and I drank milk out of jugs while Patrick played the banjo and Zach slapped his thighs and sang along.
I just woke up from a dream I had about the breakfast place where I went with Sarah, Nick and Michael. There was a sizable Austin crowd and I felt at home in scenes fancy and non-fancy alike. I hugged Dollar Store tour friends and read with them, put faces to names/said hello again to Kyle Minor, Justin Taylor, Brian Evenson, Jim Ruland, Justin Sirois, Roxane Gay, J.A. Tyler, Dan Wickett, and Elisa Gabbert. I walked the bookfair floor with Adam Robinson and spent a chunk of cash.
excitement
I caught the shuttle and avoided making eye contact with a trio of lovely poet ladies from California who spent the trip to the airport talking about a panel they saw on poetry saving the world. The ladies were wrapped in golden shawls. I considered writing a story about chapped lips. I graded on the flight all the way home and navigated the damp community college campus to teach for three hours about the departmental exam. At the grocery store I bought turkey sausage, turkey breast, lean meatballs, and egg whites. I went home and made a glass of chocolate milk with extra egg whites. I unpacked my books and photographed them.
home.
Terrible night of terrors ended with a nice dream that my mom and I were moving my stuff in a U-Haul from one place to another, Mom saying “We’ll always have somnolence” as I woke up.
I’m going to St. Louis tomorrow to read at this deal. Tonight I think I’d like to try making samosas. It’s so beautiful outside I could curse about it.
Mud Luscious #11 is live with excerpts of books to get excited about this year. Lily Hoang, Robert Lopez, Jac Jemc, Aaron Burch, Adam Robinson, Michael Kimball, Robert Lopez, myself, and more. I just realized I said Robert Lopez twice. Now three times. I’m going to allow that.
Last night I went to the Teleportal to see Bill Cotter and Annie La Ganga, plus James Hannaham and Dean Young via magic. So good.
Stacy and I tried having a word party last night and it worked. New and old friends came out and we all got silly and talked large. It was feel-good. Today I keep thinking baby rabies.
I got a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee this morning and read the whole of MLKNG SCKLS. Well wrought, with the kind of quiet ease to the lines that draws you close and surprises. He had two hair-related elements that intend to stick in the old craw.
Sasha Fletcher sent me his Greying Ghost pamphlet “We Are All Of Us Up To Something” and it tried to float into a cloud so I trapped it.
watching
I saw one of those hoarder cars outside the breakfast place today, the kind where someone piles up mail and blankets and fast food wrappers and plastic sink fittings and newspapers and styrofoam cups and books and sunglass cases and cardboard boxes and paper towels and dead leaves and stuffs it all in the car. This one seemed organized with credit card bills on the dash and blankets blocking all the windows. It was a little Saturn or something, stuffed to the roof, every space filled save for a compartment carved out for the driver. The car sagged on its axles. Well anyway later.
- what’s up 2010
I’m back in Texas. Last night we drank Johnny Walker Blue Label and walked home with the wind at our backs. Dick Clark is an animatron with a dual directive to kiss ladies and count backwards.
On the drive back from Tucson I read most of Elmore Leonard’s Escape From Five Shadows aloud. It was an early book, just his third novel, and it shows a bit in word repetition and other little things, but it’s a good book. It made me wonder about writing westerns. You have to write close enough to feel familiar with the genre but you can have too many suntanned faces peering out from under curled hat brims. Familiar but not too familiar.
My Christmas story is up at Everyday Genius, which was guest edited this month by Sasha Fletcher. The third paragraph used to be its own story, which I was calling “Things To Do With Fifty-Three Poinsettias.” It was kind of a downer so I condensed and re-appropriated. EWN said some nice things about the story. Thank you Sasha and Adam and Dan.
I’m excited to read the latest Sleepingfish, edited by Gary Lutz and Derek White and featuring a lineup I’m proud to be a part of, including Ryan Call, Anna DeForest, Sasha Fletcher, Nina Shope, Rachel May, David McLendon, Eugene Lim, The Brothers Goat, Lito Elio Porto, Adam Weinstein, Diane Williams, Dennis Cooper, Elliott Stevens, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Alec Niedenthal, Matt Bell, Eduardo Recife, David Ohle, Evelyn Hampton, Émilie Notéris, Ottessa Moshfegh, Cooper Renner, Christine Schutt, M. T. Fallon, Daniel Grandbois, Julie Doxsee, Terese Svoboda, Blake Butler, Stephen Gropp-Hess and Ali Aktan Askin. The cover looks great:
- it is inside you
The new Sonora Review is also out and ready for order. It has a lovely cover and work from me, Colleen O’Brien, Steven Church, Michael Tod Edgerton, Amanda Warren, Joshua Robbins and more. Sonoran Desert represent.
- creatures
Now I’m learning about the Corpus Days Inn where Selena was murdered. When MLK was shot in the Lorraine Motel they made it into a museum, but the Days Inn is still a Days Inn; they just changed the numbers on the doors.
