AWP 2012

I will be heading to Chicago for AWP next Wednesday, and can be found every day around lunch time at the Quarterly West/Western Humanities Review table, so stop by and say hello, enter our contest, and buy a back issue!

I'm looking forward to buying my colleagues' newly released books, like my friend Sandra Simonds' second book Mother Was a Tragic Girl,  But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, and Light without Heat: Stories by Matt Kirkpatrick, as well as the latest from Eileen Myles, Snowflake / different streets, and my professor Paisley Rekdal's new book Animal Eye (Pitt Poetry Series)


I'm sure there are many more books I'll discover/remember when I'm wandering around the book fair.

I already have two excellent new anthologies, Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability and I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women, and I'm excited to attend the respective readings for each.

I'm especially eager to catch up with friends I haven't seen since my MFA days, or since last AWP. Many good friends have ended up in nearby Wisconsin, so they'll all be making the trek down to Chicago, meaning I get to see them all. Writing can be such an isolating experience, especially this year, as I'm no longer in classes and mostly a hermit, studying for exams, opportunities for face-to-face community are much appreciated and anticipated.

See you in the Windy City!