Category: On the road…

Wherein we discuss food plans for Austin, why the town resembles a lump of steel in a freezer and the fine work of the Coen Brothers.

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Wherein we discuss Be Kind Rewind, the new Alamo Theater and our first full day in Austin.

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So I’m having trouble with Hipcast, the service that allows me to do voice posts like the one below. If you really need to know what my week in Austin will entail, you can always follow my Twitter mini-updates if you see no further postings here.

Otherwise, we’ll speak in a week or so.

Wherein we discuss why we’ve arrived in Texas a few days early…

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Ahhh AWP. How I remembered you and how much you’ve grown. There’s even room for a bratty troublemaker like me amidst your folds of earnestness and literary importance.

I kid. In 2006, a week after the demise of my 5-year relationship, I attended The Associated Writing Programs’s annual conference because it was in Austin, abutted SXSW and I needed to get the hell out of town. Since I was bitter and angry, I spent the better part of 3 days being bitter and angry to complete strangers who were really just there to let me know about their lovingly edited literary journal with a sassy title like Jumping Coffee Table or something.

I shouldn’t have gone. I should have done what normal people do with a broken heart which is drink too much and kick drywall. Instead, I’m 1500 miles from home, without purpose or anchor and castigating some poor soul from Pine Manor College for not having a URL on the front of their student publication or for giving it some less-than-sassy-moniker like Lower Hills Review.

Amid that bile, I came away with exactly one useful observation: The paper literary journal is on a shrinking island of relevance but its contents are as important as ever. How it will matter to future generations will depend almost entirely on how it takes advantage of new systems of delivery.

Or put simpler, when was the last time your saw a literary journal with an RSS feed? Aren’t we due for one?

I’ve grown and so has AWP. I went this year, happy and purposeful, as a representative of BookTour who had a table at the conference Book Fair. Our goal: To get colleges to add their literary events and visiting writers series to our database. And since it was also the celebration of my one-year anniversary with my girlfriend, I had something wonderful to come home to after a long day of conferencing.

I also noticed this year that the academic writing community was beginning to acknowledge, with considerable maturity, that seismic changes are afoot in the world of literature. Panels like "It’s Not Hopeless: The Future of Independent Publishing" seemed realistic instead of in denial. More and more journals are seeing the web as crucial to their growth. And when I told departments that we were building the "world’s largest database of author events, online and 100% free" they seemed excited instead of bemused.

I also ran into some old friends (Carolyn Kellogg, who remains effortlessly fabulous and David Kipen, without whom such things don’t seem right, and Aviya Kushner, whom I simply don’t see enough of), neighbors from back home (I boarded an outbound flight with have the Stanford Stegner teaching faculty) and made the acquaintance of a journal about meat. Plus about 65 other small publications doing excellent work, with top-flight contributors. Got me energized about writing more.

A solid productive trip, with a lovely anniversary thrown in. You just may see me in Chicago this time next year, eager to pick up the latest issue of Jumping Coffee Table

I’m off to AWP this week. If blogging is light over the next 5 days, that is why.

I’m so happy to back home in San Francisco after a week away. had a wonderful time in New York and Florida but after the difficulties of last December, I promised myself to be home through 2008. Now that I’m hear, I can’t wait.

I’ll be plenty busy so no bons bons and spray on tans for the rest of 2007. But just being home brings my nerves into quiet harmonies with my surroundings. To be with my friends, my girlfriend, Faygo the cat and my home. It’s like a perfect gulp of hot cider on a clattered cold morning.

I’m in New York for the next couple of days, visiting friends and family, meeting with the agent person. I head to Florida for Thanksgiving Tuesday Night.

If I can blog, I will. If not, have a great holiday weekend everyone. More soon…

I’m at the Salt Lake City Airport waiting for my flight home and felt like recapping the last 48 hours in park city. Which, correctly labeled by my new friends from Graphic Arts Center Publishing, felt like three weeks.

Recapping’s probably too formal. Here’s some stuff I learned out while I was out here.

• Park City’s an old silver mining town turned ski and tourist destination in the late 1980s. Most of the remaining historic buildings downtown survived a devastating 1898 fire.

• Park City is only 30 miles outside of Salt Lake City, the state capital. The 2002 Olympics used Park City for a bunch of big hill-related events. Monuments to the athletes and games dot roadsides.

• Park City’s really a sleepy town when it ain’t ski season (which thanks to "bad science" is arriving later and later) or Sundance. Historic Main St. was practically deserted save a few other lost souls like me.

• The Village Candy Shoppe is charming as all get out. I walked in and heard a voice cry "Just a moment! I’m putting toffee on!" You just don’t hear that anymore.

• I’d never been to a "swiss continental" restaurant before until the good people of Pub West took me to Adolph’s on Saturday night. The name creeped me out (I’m Jewish. It might as well have been Geobels’s World of Weiners) but both the food and company was delicious.

• Although my speech went fine, I don’t think I have to give the "Wake up and pay attention to technology" speech anymore to book publishers. I think they get it.

• PubWest is filled with mighty nice people I look forward to keeping in touch with in the future. Next year the conference is in Portland. Hmmm. I might have to present a seminar at Ground Kontrol.

Just finished my big ole’ talk in Park City. The living is easy for the rest of the weekend here.

Nice people in PubWest. I may have made some new friends.