This panel included Kathy Pories, senior editor at Algonquin Books; P.J. Mark, literary agent with Janklow & Nesbit; Rob Spillman, Tin House editor; Elisabeth Schmitz, Grove/Atlantic editor; and Mary Gannon, editorial director of Poets & Writers. This was one of the last sessions I attended at AWP, and I was fairly exhausted at the time. [...]

I attended the AWP session “So Many Submissions, So Little Time: Editors’ Strategies for Equitable and Efficient Submissions Management” to get some ideas for a side project I may be working on in the future, but in the end, this discussion just seemed to drive home how difficult it is to get something (particularly fiction) [...]

My AWP posts continue to trickle in. I have maybe two more after this one, so I should be done this week and will then move on to other matters. On a housekeeping note, I’ve had some bizarre problem with WordPress and have been unable to leave comments on other blogs under my usual name. [...]

In the AWP session “Behind the Book: Debut Authors Discuss the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” debut authors Alexi Zentner, Amina Gautier, Kristen-Paige Madonia, and Alexander Yates discussed their behind-the-scenes publishing experiences. Here’s a quick rundown of what they had to say: Don’t be afraid to communicate with your publisher; don’t expect your 200 [...]

Reading on the page and hearing a story read out loud are completely different experiences. This is why I often make plenty of edits before reading out loud, and why it took me so long to choose which story in Living Arrangements to use for readings. (So far I’ve used “To Elizabeth Bishop, with Love.” [...]

The AWP session “Selling Out Everyone You Love: The Ethics of Writing Nonfiction” featured Krista Bremer, Lee Martin, Cheryl Strayed, Stephen Elliott, and Poe Ballantine (I missed Poe Ballantine, though – had to leave early to make an appointment). The “selling out” part of the session title comes from a Joan Didion quote, but most [...]

I still have all these notes from every session I attended at AWP, but since returning home I’ve 1) come down with a horrible cold and 2) seem to have lost my will to blog. But here’s a quick timeline of my first AWP: Wednesday, daytime: Travel most of the way to Chicago with Sherry, [...]

Margaret Atwood’s keynote was fabulous last night, as expected, and afterward I was one of the lucky few hundreds to attend the book signing. A few key, if paraphrased, comments from her keynote: I didn’t study “craft.” I read and wrote and read and wrote and read and wrote. Plot is the order of events [...]

Noon. Friday. AWP Book Expo. Table C1-C2. I’ll be there with my books, my free bookmarks and a smile.

First, I finally got the Living Arrangements bookmarks in the mail to the winners of the bookmark giveaway. Those of you in the States should have either already received them or should expect them soon. I also sent a few across the Atlantic…I wonder if those little bookmarks are in the air right now? Let’s [...]