A'dub & Stuff

(photo thanks to Bianca Stone)

Seems like everyone is blogging about DC's AWP. I was a lot busier at this one in comparison to Denver, so my thoughts are the thoughts of someone working the table, as opposed to, a wander- which is all I did last year. The only panel I attended was Monsters, Mongrels, Writing Across Identity or something to that effect. It was 9am & I was tired, almost too tired to understand smart people talking about smart things. I just wanted a coffee. On Friday night, I read for H_NGM_N on the Lincoln Memorial stairs (pics forthcoming) & that was pretty awesome.

On Saturday night, Dan & I hosted a reading for Sink Review along with a ton of other super-cool presses & the readers, turn-out, & reading itself was great. Dan & I arrived an hour early to maximize the event space, inadvertently ordered the two most expensive beers on the menu, rearranged the entire room, set-up an amp (borrowed from Christie Ann's bf) then ate some damn good Mac & Cheese. Not wanting to lug an amp around, our night ended as many nights did- not on a dance floor or jammed into another reading &/or reading after-party but relaxing at our hotel bar.

I got to see lots of Jared & Farrah, Dan, Sommer, Tony Mancus & Sawako!!, as well as, J.Mae Barizo & Rich Scheiwe. I also got to meet Katherine Sullivan & Jen Hyde. I saw some of Mathias & Julia which was nice. Surprising I saw little of Vee, Carter Edwards, Ben Mirov, Christie Ann Reynolds, & Amy Lawless (all of whom I spent a ton of time with at Denver). I expected to but didn't, not even once see Molly Gaudry.

I'm pretty happy with the books I picked up:

Sommer Browning & Dan Boehl's books on Birds, LLC, Matt Henriksen's book on Black Ocean, Jessica Baran's book on Apostrophe, Jeremy Schmall's book on Xing, & Claire Becker's book on Octopus. Thomas Fink gave me a copy of his new book (which to my surprise has a blurb by me on the back cover-AWESOME!!) & I picked up my contributor copy of the Coldfront Yearbook. My friend Nicole gave me a copy of Rose Hunter's book on adp. I also got a copy of No, Dear.

I picked up the dbl-chapbook by Paige Taggart & Justin Marks on Poor Claudia, Chris Martin & Jennifer Denrow's chapbooks from BMP, Sasha Steensen & Mark Horosky's chapbooks from Flying Guillotine Press, Heather Christle's chapbook, The Seaside, an advance printing of an Eric Baus chapbook from minutes BOOKS,, Genya Turovskaya's chapbook by Octopus & an Amy Wright's chapbook from Apostrophe.