Conferences and quarantines

On March 4th I flew to San Antonio for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference. Afterwards, I took a bus to Austin for a few days, then flew back on the 11th—which was only a week ago. But thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems like a year since then.

In retrospect, it was totally irresponsible to hold the conference at all—not to mention ableist. That said, I’m glad I got out of the house before being cooped up inside for who knows how long. It was nice seeing the friends I only get to see once a year—my Split Lip crew, my MFA classmates. I ended up filling in at two readings and one panel; it was the first time I’d read my work aloud since I graduated from my MFA in 2016. That meant a lot to me. Though I wish so many people hadn’t been forced to drop out of the conference to make it happen!

I did come home with an impressive small press book haul. Good thing, too—I’ll need plenty of reading material now that the whole country is in quarantine. Here’s what I bought:

• Snagged a “Write like a motherfucker” travel mug to match my regular mug from The Rumpus for only $6 on the last day. What a steal!

• From The Cupboard Pamphlet:

  • In Transit by Krys Malcolm Belc (Split Lip crew!)

  • Excellent Evidence of Human Activity by Sara Ryan (Split Lip crew!)

  • Dante’s Cartography by Alyssa Quinn (there was a deal if you bought 3!)

• From Deep Vellum (an excellent Texas-based press focused on translation) :

  • Girls Lost by Jessica Schiefauer (Swedish YA thriller)

  • Blood Sisters by Kim Yideum (Novel written by a South Korean poet)

• From The Operating System:

  • Born Again by Ivy Johnson (you know I love books about fundamentalist Christian upbringings)

  • La Comandante Maya: Rita Valdivia on the 50th Anniversary of the Death in Bolivia of Ernesto Che Guevara (apparently Valdivia fought alongside Guevara for years, but nobody remembers her because sexism)

  • Free “Poets Have all the Feels” notebook in the bundle!

• From Clash Books:

  • Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath, edited by Leza Cantoral (can Sad Girl Lit be a new microgenre, please?)

• From Red Hen Press:

  • Boy Oh Boy by Zachary Doss (I had the privilege of meeting Zach and hearing him read a few years ago—just a few weeks before he passed away. His mother read a story from his posthumous collection this year. He was just phenomenal, as a person and a writer.)

• From Kaya Press (publishes Asian diaspora literature):

  • Readymade Bodhisattva: The Kaya Anthology of South Korean Science Fiction, edited by Sunyoung Park and San Joon Park (the first South Korean sci-fi anthology to be translated into English!)

• From Texas Review Press:

  • The Loneliest Band in France by Dylan Fisher (Dylan is doing his MFA at UNLV, my alma mater, and when I heard him read the dismemberment scene from this novella, I knew I had to have it.)

• From Sarabande Books:

  • All Heathens by Marianne Chan (where Split Lip Crew + MFA cohort collides! Marianne is truly the best.)

• The latest issue of The Bushwick Review, edited by my friend Kristen Fellicetti, who I met at the Tin House YA Fiction Workshop

• From Press 53:

  • Earthly Delights and Other Apocalypses by Jen Julian (I read with her this year at AWP—her stories are delightfully weird.)

• From PANK:

  • We Know This Will All Disappear by Melissa Ragsly (Split Lip contributor & fashion icon)

  • The latest PANK print issue

Needless to say, I’m glad I brought my biggest suitcase.