Check out Word Pirates co-founder Joy Lanzendorfer’s short story “Rabble of Butterflies” in the Spring 2010 issue of Superstition Review. It’s a great read. Go, Joy!

Word Pirate Morgan Elliott’s work in the most recent issue of ZYZZYVA. They published a short graphic comic titled “Kallio Kiss.” Well done, Morgan!

You can check out more about the Spring Issue of ZYZZYVA here.

Hark, a vagrant put up some hilarious comics based on The Great Gatsby. A sample:

More here.

I enjoyed this story on NPR about Paul Harding’s novel Tinkers, which just won the Pulitzer Prize. For one thing, when Harding learned he had won, he reacted exactly as I imagine I would:

“I came as close to actually fainting as I think I ever have, because I literally just could not believe what I saw when it came up on the website,” Harding says with a laugh. “And I kept refreshing and it just kept coming up Tinkers, Tinkers, Tinkers.”

I think I do a version of that every time I get good writing news.

Anyway, first Harding couldn’t get his (Pulitzer-prize-winning) novel published and almost gave up on it. Then Bellevue Literary Press, a small independent press, decided to publish it. Book Passages, a bookstore in the Bay Area, featured it, people began to talk, word of mouth spread, and soon Harding’s book was getting reviewed in The New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times. Fast forward to now: Pulitzer Prize and a deal with Random House.

It just goes to show–people may be all about nonfat milk these days, but cream still rises to the top.

Besides learning and inspiration, another thing I gained at AWP was the worldwide beard game championship title. (At least, I think I was the winner of the beard game.) If you think yelling beard in a public place is strange, you haven’t attended a dance for writers. Now that is strange. When we saw this on the agenda, we didn’t think anyone would show up. But the place was hoppin’, and writers actually had some pretty sweet dance moves. Most of them also had social skills. A few of them did not … to the point of creepiness. Giving socially maladjusted people free alcohol may not be a good idea.

Speaking of ideas, one thing Michael Chabon said in his keynote that I really liked: Why would you try to be a writer if you weren’t full of ideas? The panels sparked so many ideas for me, but one of the reasons is that they weren’t trying to. The panelists all seemed to assume we were full of ideas and wanted to hear more about how to get those ideas out and arrange, share, and perfect them.

(Read on …)

I had never been to an AWP Conference before, but I enjoyed it. It was held in the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, which has a statue of a giant blue bear trying to get inside the building:

Roughly 9,000 people attended AWP this year. Even factoring in that many of those people are academics or wannabes, that’s a lot of writers. While some panels were standing-room-only, I was able to see everything I wanted to see.

There’s something for every type of writer at AWP–panels on fiction, poetry, nonfiction, publishing, teaching creative writing, playwriting, young adult writing, literary readings, etc. In my typical gung-ho style, I went to lots and lots of panels, pretty much non-stop panel hopping every day. The first day, we went to seven panels and the keynote speech, plus we found time to tramp all over downtown Denver. I later learned that many people only go to one or two panels a day. One woman said that she would be exhausted if she went to as many panels as we did. Why is sitting in a room listening to people talk exhausting, exactly?

There were a lot of men with beards at this conference. Marcia and I started playing a game where we said the word “beard” every time we saw one. Whoever said “beard” last was winning. A typical conversation went like this:

“I liked that panel–beard–especially the second speaker–beard. Did you catch his name? Beard.”

I can’t remember who won the game overall. I think it was Marcia?

The panels were run by intelligent folks who knew what they were talking about. It’s not so much that I learned that much–although I did learn some things, like how to put together a poetry book or the benefits of the 10 minute play form–as that the conference generated inspiration for me. I came away with a notebook full of ideas for short stories, articles, poem, Word Pirates prompts, and so on. That alone was worth the trip.

At the end of each panel, there was the Question and Answer period, which are always painful to sit through. Does anyone like Q&As? Here is Marcia’s breakdown of a typical question people tended to ask:

I was relieved that Michael Chabon, who gave the keynote speech, did not hold a Q&A because of the size of the audience. I don’t know how many people were packed into the ballroom at the Hilton, but it looked like hundreds, maybe even a thousand people. To appease those who love asking questions, Michael Chabon wrote the speech in Q&A form, where he asked questions of himself and then answered them. It was pretty funny.

Michael Chabon is so charming.

End of Part I. Over and out.

For some reason, our AWP posts wouldn’t go up when we were at the conference, so blogging was impossible. However we will remedy this by putting up a summary post later this week. I even have pictures. Stay tuned.

Sloshspot has a list of 16 Drinks Named for Authors and Their Books. A sample:

John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath

6 oz FourMaxed Grape Malt Beverage
3 oz Cabernet Sauvignon
0.5 oz Absinthe
A Dash of Wormwood Oil
12 Frozen Grapes

Place grapes in Collins glass. Pour out FourMaxed over grapes. Mix Wine, Absinthe and Wormwood oil and pour into glass. Throw up as your house is bulldozed and prepare to head west. If you can’t find a can of FourMaxed, then go with the next best thing which is the beloved Sparks.

Or you can just go for Jack London’s Call of the Wild Turkey, which is, naturally, one Bottle of Wild Turkey.

I just found out that there may be an adult version of the TV show Reading Rainbow coming soon. Apparently LeVar Burton said on twitter (I cannot say tweeted, no I cannot):

“Want y’all to know that I’m seriously moving forward with an idea for a new version of a Reading Rainbow like show. Webisodes for adults.”

And then again:

You heard it here first… Reading Rainbow 2.0 is in th works! Stay tuned for more info. But, you don’t have to…

That is awesome.