Our trip to NYC went way too fast. There was much to see inside and outside of the conference. I think it probably unfair to lots of great writers that they had to compete with the rest of the city.
I managed to see a lot of really cool people anyway. Some highlights were: Joyce Carol Oates, Johnathon Saffron Foer, James Tate, and Stephen Dunn. I hope to one day sit on a giant velvet pillow beside Joyce Carol Oates and have her talk about herself while I crochet pot holders for her fans. I think mostly she reminds me that we can't take ourselves too seriously, that that is the mark of the dead or dying artist in all of us, and to have some perspective.
I also went to several panels, including Writing and Motherhood with Jacina Townsend and Joey Flamm-Costello. I have a sixteen month old son so it was nice to hear women speak about finding ways to balance their lives as writers and their lives as mothers.
Shawna (ghost intern) and I spent a night out with Josh Bell (my favorite poem of his here) and Matthew Guenette (check out his blog) going to the Met and eating Sushi. We would have pictures of this but Josh and Matt are both vampires and so their images cannot be captured on film.
Thanks to Ron for keeping us in line. (Seriously, he made us all wear matching outfits and we had to walk everywhere in single file)
I had a great time, an excellent time, and saw many people from my former lives, though I wish I had more time to do everything I wanted to. This would have been contingent on being able to compress time in NY to not affect time in Indiana and also winning the lottery.
Next year, Chicago!
Monday, February 11, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Spring Unsprung
Hellew- I'm the new intern for the SIR, Melissa "tough bones" Cossey.
I'm a senior at USI majoring in English with a focus on exploiting the human condition.
Evansville is my 30th city to live in, which should be commemorated in some way, so I decided to finish a degree here.
I'm a fiction writer, which is the toughest of all the genres because there are less tethers to keep you from floating out in outer space. I have been working on a story lately that hurts me- none of the decisions are easy and none of it is easy to write. It seems like this kind of resistance would mean to be telling you that you shouldn't be writing- that, like any visceral markers in anything we do, if we are met with too much opposition then it seems the natural order of things isn't going to allow for it.
But Rodney Jones says that you should be met with opposition at every single turn, that you should second-guess every decision. And he's so much smarter than me, or you.
AWP New York is just around the corner. I'm excited to be out of Indiana to have some perspective again- spending too much time in the heartland shrinks the world and suddenly my sensitivities settle on believing everything to be much smaller than it really is.
I'm a senior at USI majoring in English with a focus on exploiting the human condition.
Evansville is my 30th city to live in, which should be commemorated in some way, so I decided to finish a degree here.
I'm a fiction writer, which is the toughest of all the genres because there are less tethers to keep you from floating out in outer space. I have been working on a story lately that hurts me- none of the decisions are easy and none of it is easy to write. It seems like this kind of resistance would mean to be telling you that you shouldn't be writing- that, like any visceral markers in anything we do, if we are met with too much opposition then it seems the natural order of things isn't going to allow for it.
But Rodney Jones says that you should be met with opposition at every single turn, that you should second-guess every decision. And he's so much smarter than me, or you.
AWP New York is just around the corner. I'm excited to be out of Indiana to have some perspective again- spending too much time in the heartland shrinks the world and suddenly my sensitivities settle on believing everything to be much smaller than it really is.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
My MFA Search + Google Spreadsheets
So, in addition to work I do for SIR, I also have this other life in which I attempt to finish my degree at USI and in which I am going through the grueling process of applying to graduate schools. Only, I haven't even gotten to the grueling parts yet, maybe.
A month ago I thought I had my MFA list down to a sure 10 or so, but I've since discovered a few more programs I might like (Virginia Commonwealth, Brown, Vanderbilt...), and so had to go back to charting and tabling (which is what I do best in life, perhaps...). It's a time-consuming process involving two open reference books (AWP Guide [borrowed from Mitchell like a year ago...] and Kealey's Handbook); five Firefox tabs opened at all times to the U.S. News MFA program ratings, Kealey's MFA Blog, GMail, New Pages list of programs, and Google (to get to programs' websites, which usually offer the least info out of all of these methods); and a comfortable swivel chair. It's a freaking mess, and that is where a nice clean spreadsheet comes in.
I get obsessive, yes.
From the above link you can keep up with which schools are still on my list (I know like 1/2 a person who is actually interested in this)--I'm deleting them as I rule them out, and hopefully not adding many more, although some have mentioned that I need some safety schools thrown in there, so over the next week or so I might add a couple of those.
And then, someone please stop me.
A month ago I thought I had my MFA list down to a sure 10 or so, but I've since discovered a few more programs I might like (Virginia Commonwealth, Brown, Vanderbilt...), and so had to go back to charting and tabling (which is what I do best in life, perhaps...). It's a time-consuming process involving two open reference books (AWP Guide [borrowed from Mitchell like a year ago...] and Kealey's Handbook); five Firefox tabs opened at all times to the U.S. News MFA program ratings, Kealey's MFA Blog, GMail, New Pages list of programs, and Google (to get to programs' websites, which usually offer the least info out of all of these methods); and a comfortable swivel chair. It's a freaking mess, and that is where a nice clean spreadsheet comes in.
I get obsessive, yes.
From the above link you can keep up with which schools are still on my list (I know like 1/2 a person who is actually interested in this)--I'm deleting them as I rule them out, and hopefully not adding many more, although some have mentioned that I need some safety schools thrown in there, so over the next week or so I might add a couple of those.
And then, someone please stop me.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Fall Readings! Pictures!
So far this fall the Ropewalk Reading Series at University of Southern Indiana has hosted Mike Magnuson, recently the author of Heft on Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180; Michael Martone, with his latest collection, Double-wide: Collected fiction of Michael Martone; and Gary Gildner, whose latest collection of poems is titled Cleaning a Rainbow. We've implemented a new and fun thing this semester, in which students do a kind of "meet and greet" with the visiting writers before their readings. This includes punch, cookies, questions, and sometimes pictures. For the pictures of the readings and the receptions, please take a look at our new Photobucket account, which is linked below. And we've added a big backdrop with a sharp-looking 3-D logo, which just makes our readings that much more enjoyable.
On November 8 Dana Kinstler, winner of our 2006 Mary C. Mohr fiction award will be reading as well, so keep an eye out for that.
Don't forget to check out our pictures...
On November 8 Dana Kinstler, winner of our 2006 Mary C. Mohr fiction award will be reading as well, so keep an eye out for that.
Don't forget to check out our pictures...
Photobucket Album
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Fall Issue Update
In the office today making final edits. If all goes as planned, the fall issue will be shipped to the printer tomorrow (Monday) morning. It never fails that just when you think that everything is perfect, another error (or two) rears its ugly head. This morning I was flipping through the poetry, confident that all that was left to proof were the book reviews, when I noticed a couple of errors that somehow made it through four levels of proof reading (my original layout, the author, SIR staff, USI's Print Services): "imaging" instead of "imagining" and "breath" instead of "breathe."Ah, the spellbinding life of an editor...
R
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Back to Business, But Not as Usual
From the fall introduction:
...America likes to think
Every one can recover from every thing,
But about this,
Especially, America is wrong.
—Liam Rector, "Back to Country with Pulitzer"
The editors note with regret departures by three friends who have helped and inspired us and whom we have loved as a part of Ropewalk, the Press, the Reading Series, and the Review. One of these, the departure of former managing editor Jim McGarrah for sunnier climes in Florida, is not such a painful loss for Jim but for all his friends here in Indiana who will miss seeing him on a daily basis.
The other two departures, however, are causes for sadness and alarm. The death, in August, of Jim Blevins, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Southern Indiana, came after a long bout with prostate cancer and deprives us of a friend who was instrumental in creating the structures--financial and intellectual--which permitted our projects to flourish. We will miss his wise counsel, his optimistic outlook, his enthusiasm regarding all the creative arts, and the particular interest he took in our success.
The death of Liam Rector at age fifty-seven in New York City came as an especially severe blow to his many friends here at USI. It was at the time of Matthew Graham’s wedding in 1987 that Liam, a member of the wedding party, first proposed that New Harmony would be an ideal place for a literary retreat. Out of that notion, and with Liam’s encouragement and support, Ropewalk itself was born, followed in time by all of the ancillary programs.
Liam continued to be a close friend and follower of our projects. He led panel discussions at Ropewalk, read several times on campus, and continued to advise us in long, often late-night phone calls (for which he was famous). While Liam’s program at Bennington often put us in competition with him for workshop leaders we would have liked to recruit, his warm friendship and advice more than compensated for the loss. Nothing, however, will compensate for the death of such a close, close friend. Our sympathies in particular go out to his wife, Tree Swenson, and his daughter, Virginia Rector.
TW
...America likes to think
Every one can recover from every thing,
But about this,
Especially, America is wrong.
—Liam Rector, "Back to Country with Pulitzer"
The editors note with regret departures by three friends who have helped and inspired us and whom we have loved as a part of Ropewalk, the Press, the Reading Series, and the Review. One of these, the departure of former managing editor Jim McGarrah for sunnier climes in Florida, is not such a painful loss for Jim but for all his friends here in Indiana who will miss seeing him on a daily basis.
The other two departures, however, are causes for sadness and alarm. The death, in August, of Jim Blevins, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Southern Indiana, came after a long bout with prostate cancer and deprives us of a friend who was instrumental in creating the structures--financial and intellectual--which permitted our projects to flourish. We will miss his wise counsel, his optimistic outlook, his enthusiasm regarding all the creative arts, and the particular interest he took in our success.
The death of Liam Rector at age fifty-seven in New York City came as an especially severe blow to his many friends here at USI. It was at the time of Matthew Graham’s wedding in 1987 that Liam, a member of the wedding party, first proposed that New Harmony would be an ideal place for a literary retreat. Out of that notion, and with Liam’s encouragement and support, Ropewalk itself was born, followed in time by all of the ancillary programs.
Liam continued to be a close friend and follower of our projects. He led panel discussions at Ropewalk, read several times on campus, and continued to advise us in long, often late-night phone calls (for which he was famous). While Liam’s program at Bennington often put us in competition with him for workshop leaders we would have liked to recruit, his warm friendship and advice more than compensated for the loss. Nothing, however, will compensate for the death of such a close, close friend. Our sympathies in particular go out to his wife, Tree Swenson, and his daughter, Virginia Rector.
TW
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