What Up

I've got a friend coming in from out of town, so I'll be gone for a few hours today. But just so everyone knows what's up, I had a wonderful weekend at the AWP Convention (that's the national convention of university writing programs), which resulted in the following good things: 1.) My ex-major professor encouraged me to send out Travels With Ritalin again--once more, with feeling!--so I now feel like I have two books to sell instead of one; 2.) I was able to meet several editors personally, so now I have pitched articles to The Believer, Creative Nonfiction, and Image, and I have a reason to send stuff out now; 3.) Perhaps most importantly, I reconnected with several wonderful people (Hi, Michelle! Thanks for committing nametag fraud on my behalf!) and found myself transformed simply by being in the same room as all these wonderful tweedy academic types. I watched them all--row upon row of bespectacled people who clearly loved to talk and think, I heard them talking about pedagogy and semesters and independent presses, and my heart swelled, and I thought, "My God! These are my people! How could I have ever left?" So now I'm committed to finding some way to getting back into teaching. It's nice to have a mission.

On a similar note, a wonderful person who works at NYU heard me tell about my reaction to the AWP a few nights ago and said, "Why not send me a c.v. and I'll pass it around?" So I'm doing that as well. I'm so busy! But very happy. Alas, it cuts into the blogging a trifle. But in this particular case, no news is good news. More soon.