Heading North is Here!

If you’re in the area, I hope I’ll see you tonight (Wednesday, Nov. 8) at Midtown Scholar Bookstore at 7 p.m. for the official launch of Heading North! I have the honor to be in conversation with Curtis Smith.

I’ll be roving about with and for the book through November and beyond: the graphic below the start of things, and I am especially open to events in the new year! As always, the most up-to-date information on events can be found on my website. If you’d like me to visit your bookstore or campus or library or chat with your book club or students or offer a workshop, etc., please be in touch!

I’m excited, also, to share an article I wrote for Writers Digest: 3 Tips for Creating and Managing a Large Cast of Characters. Heading North has given me ample experience in doing exactly this thing, and so if a little practical advice in this area is of use to you or your students, I’m delighted to help. The strategies here could also be delivered in workshop form!

Work toward peace: contact your representatives to call for a ceasefire.

Last night, after a podcast recording with the fabulous Anita Kelly of Lez Talk About Books, Baby! and a little publication day celebratory sushi, I settled in to be an audience member for one of the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop alumni readings. These readings aren’t public, but rather are gatherings for the participants of the year’s workshops to stay in connection and to celebrate each others’ work, organized by Elizabeth Dark, Associate Director of Programs, and I can’t think of anything more wonderful. I’ve crowed before about the particularly close-knit nature of the KRWW workshop groups and the larger sense of community that pervades the experience, but to still be feeling that in November after a July workshop is something extraordinary. And the readings by the participants were just continuous three-minute bursts of brilliance.

I also get to share a publication week with Gary Fincke’s The Mayan Syndrome. Not only is Fincke a massively talented writer across all genres—The Mayan Syndrome is a collection of essays—he was my first creative writing teacher. Professor Fincke permitted me to take a pair of classes with him at Susquehanna when I was just a sprout in high school, including an advanced poetry workshop where I was definitely outclassed by the college juniors and seniors in the room. But in that room I learned how to workshop and, more importantly, be workshopped. And I got to experience independence—driving myself all the way across the river twice a week (only occasionally stopping for a cheeky doughnut and coffee on the way back to the high school). I bought my textbooks—collections of contemporary poetry that broke open my little head—at the college bookstore and paid for them with one of the very first checks I’d ever written. I sat at Tony Hoagland’s left elbow during class while he read to us from Donkey Gospel and felt a way I’d never felt before. You see, in high school, I think the most contemporary poetry I was ever assigned there was Edgar Allan Poe. And I loved Poe—still do—but I just had no idea what poetry could be like. The immediacy, the urgency, the experience of being slapped upside the head, frankly, with an image or a phrase that was deliberately unbeautiful. That class is inevitably why I turn to poetry to solve most of my prose problems. I am so grateful.

Some treasures:

• The Lidl-Trek cycling team play ice hockey.

  • This is one of those precious things wherein the universe creates something that feels like it’s just for you. My favorite cyclist’s new team does some start-of-offseason team bonding at the Trek headquarters in Waterloo, Wisconsin.

• The Finding Favorites podcast! Host Leah Jones has put together a truly delightful concept—finding new passions and interests through conversations with folks, rather than an algorithm—and I had such a lovely time talking with Leah about cycling and writing and Heading North. Do yourself a favor: check out the Finding Favorites episode list and find something to be excited about!

• Seattle Kraken Assistant Athletic Trainer Justin Rogers comes out and writes a tender letter to his younger self. I am heartened by this news—even in the face of the NHL’s constant tripping over itself in matters of diversity and inclusion. …and not to be That Guy, but if you’re excited about Justin Rogers’ story, maybe check out this hockey novel that just came out?