Writeful

a weblog for readers and writers

Monday, January 31, 2011

Tracks at AWP Conference and BookFair


Tracks will be represented at the AWP Conference and Bookfair next week!


Atticus Books, the independent press publishing Tracks this summer will have a table representing Tracks and its other titles throughout the duration of the AWP conference.


I’ll be there along with other Atticus authors for the AWP BookFair on Saturday, February 5 from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; the event is free and open to the public.


The 2011 AWP Conference and BookFair is being held in Washington, DC at the Marriott Wardman Park & Omni Shoreham Hotels. The AWP BookFair will be held at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel.


Since 1967, AWP has supported writers & writing programs around the world. The organization now support more than 34,000 writers at over 500 member colleges and universities
and 100 writers' conferences & centers.


Each year, AWP holds its Annual Conference & Bookfair in a different region of North America in order to celebrate the outstanding authors, teachers, writing programs, literary centers, and small press publishers of that region. The Annual Conference typically features 350 presentations: readings, lectures, panel discussions, and Forums plus hundreds of book signings, receptions, dances, and informal gatherings. The conference attracts more than 8,000 attendees and more than 500 publishers. It’s one of the biggest and liveliest literary gatherings in North America.


Learn more about the AWP Conference:

http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2011awpconf.php


Learn about the BookFair here:

http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2011bookfair.php


And learn more about Atticus Books here:

http://atticusbooksonline.com/category/2011-book-titles


And be sure to visit us at the Atticus table (K34) in the AWP Exhibit Hall!

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Friday, January 28, 2011

Updike Down

Is it just me, or does it seem that we’re losing our Great American Writers?

Watching them fall like a heavy rain of letters and semicolons.

I woke with that thought yesterday. It ended up being the opening of the first and only poem I’ve written this year. Like much of my creative fiction and poetry, the idea comes to live in my head and roosts: I sit on a train and look at all of the passengers and imagine their lives; I imagine what it must be like for a child inside the womb; I watch a spider ride a wave down the drain of the shower and wish it hadn’t gone so soon.

This thought—about the great writers dying off—came yesterday when I realized it was the two-year anniversary of John Updike’s death.

Updike, like Rabbit, is at rest.

Sure, there are still hundreds, probably thousands, of Great American Writers. But somehow Updike is lodged in my mind as one of the giants, a powerhouse in league with Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner; Henry James and Mark Twain. A writer of serious literature. There are masterful authors at work now, certainly. But when it comes to the representatives of literature, the old men in tweed jackets, sleeves rolled up and a single slice of paper rolled in the typewriter … have they all died off?

If not, will they soon? Who are the contenders in the collective conscious of the universal library? Roth? Irving? Franzen? Wolfe? McDermott?

(We’ve recently lost contenders Wallace, Mailer and Vonnegut.)

Now, with Updike down, who will carry on the tradition? Who will play the music of heavy keys and bleeding fingers, clanking out a soundtrack of antiquated print?

Any nominations?

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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Nude Lit & Art Video

Got your attention? With the next Lit & Art at the Watermark coming up this Sunday, this seems an appropriate time to share with you a video from the last exciting event.


In November, acclaimed author Bathsheba Monk headlined at the Lit & Art Reading Series. Other featured readers included Charles Jensen, Katherine Cottle, and myself; music was provided by Red Tractor Factory and Bahman Panahi.


Bathsheba presented her premier reading from Nude Walker, her second book published by FSG. Novelist Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried) said, "Bathsheba Monk is a writer I'll be talking about when I talk about brilliant new writers."


Bathsheba turned her first reading from Nude Walker into a video that plugs both her book and, graciously, Tracks, my novel in stories. Watch Bathsheba read from her work, discuss the Lit & Art event, and even offer a few words about Tracks (aka Train) below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5PELu1J0xs

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