The Pre-AWP Edition

Last week, Heading North was glowingly reviewed in The Under Review: “The relationships playing out on the page in Heading North are at once delicate and stubborn, tender and brutal. Not unlike the nature of hockey itself. And not unlike so many of the story’s sentences and paragraphs, exquisite and beautiful in their precision.”

It’s AWP Time!

Next week, a large swathe of the writerly world will descend upon Kansas City, Missouri, for the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference. This is easily my favorite conference because it’s the one where I get to see so many friends, old and new, and meet folks I’ve only known from online. And, of course, the conference itself is a three day bout of drinking from the firehose of writer-chat, which I love.

There really is nothing like going where there’s a shared language (especially when most of the people one speaks to on a regular basis don’t share that language). Just like Cheers, you know: where everyone knows (that they can look at your dangling conference badge to find out) your name.

(I am not related to George Wendt, for the record.)

It’s an exciting AWP, as well, since it’s the first one I’ll be to with my own book in hand! As a very direct result of that, I have the distinct privilege to be on a panel—”First Time’s the Charm: Debut Authors on How to Debut”—with four fabulous writers. I’m especially excited to hear about my fellow panelists’ experiences; the debut journey is so varied an adventure.

I’ll also have a pair of signings: one at the Braddock Avenue Books booth on Thursday afternoon and one at the Vermont Studio Center table on Friday afternoon.

The Panel!

Making

In the realm of making, it’s been a scattered time, but I’ve been spinning (a little) and baking (a lot of bread). Most pressing right now is the weaving. It’s not that I’m spending a great deal of time at the loom—sadly not—but it’s where I’m feeling some urgency, and I’ve been chipping away by inches in recent days. The scarves that are on my loom have been there for a year and a half, which is too long. I don’t know what it will be like to finish the weaving because the cloth wrapped around the beam is covered in snags from Roo’s claws. One of his many attention-getting gambits was to stretch up on the beam and give a little tug—not the intent and purposeful pulling of sharpening behavior, but “I know if I do this, you’ll get up from your desk,” which was his mission, at all times.

I miss that nixie¹ , endearing cat so much. Finishing any of these projects is also a kind of grieving, the intertwining of memory and action.

I expect I will spend a lot of time with a darning needle, and my memories, doing my best to coax the pulled threads back into the web at the correct tension as possible. Gist Yarn has a tutorial for that here. But first the weaving needs to be finished.

Some Treasures:

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
If you love fiction that knows things intimately, specifically, and with effortless authority (and you know that I love books like that immensely, cf The Queen of the Night, The Master Butchers Singing Club, all of Andrea Barrett, etc.), give this one a read. (The particular circumstance of this novel is the breeding and training of some extraordinary dogs. And unlike many novels that feature animals prominently, this one treats its canine characters with deep compassion. I don’t think I’m giving too much away by saying that, and I want you to try this book. Also, the sentences are spectacularly gorgeous.

Long Thread Media Podcast featuring Justin Squizzero of The Burroughs Garret
So, I’m a heathen who doesn’t really listen to podcasts, but sometimes I will make an exception. Justin Squizzero, to continue the theme above of knowing things, especially things most people don’t know, is a Vermont weaver whose work centers on the use of an 19th century Jacquard loom, which he has used to weave everything from traditional figured coverlets to linen damask. He’s also a dyer and spinner, and he reproduced a traditionally dyed checked fabric for some chairs at Mount Vernon. This podcast episode features a great deal of conversation about the nature of making, technology, and the process of knowledge acquisition and transmission. There is deep appreciation for process in this conversation, and Squizzero isn’t simply an enthusiast for reenactment/doing things the old way because it’s old, but rather because these particular old ways of doing things—and the mechanisms invented for that purpose—work, and in many ways they work more efficiently for that particular task than more contemporary options.

“Oldest Known Scottish Tartan ‘Brought Back to Life’”
About 17 years ago, while on a rag-tag research trip² , I stumbled into the Bocksten Man exhibit in Varberg, Sweden, and was absolutely fascinated by the way a bog preserves natural fibers, particularly protein fibers (like wool and human hair). So despite the fact that his body had been in the bog since the 14th century, his clothes, hair, and leather accoutrements were well-preserved. (There’s also a bit of a murder mystery surrounding the Bocksten Man, because he didn’t end up in that bog by accident, but I’m much more interested in the textiles than the medieval true crime part.) A piece of tartan from the 17th century was recovered from a bog in Scotland, and after analysis of the dyes used in making the fabric, a contemporary tartan-maker recreated the fabric. This is so cool.

¹ This word, nixie, is a particularly PA Dutch (Pennsylvania Deutsch) artifact, and I grew up hearing it applied to us kids when we were being mischievous. It’s a shortening of “nichtsnutz,” which means know-nothing or good-for-nothing, which seems more severe than the usage I experienced. And the spelling of nixie is a total approximation, as almost none of my PA Dutch lexicon was ever shown to me in writing. But it is exactly the correct word to apply to a cat who knows exactly what he’s doing when he’s pushing things off the counter while you’re staring right at him.

² As far as I can tell, “rag-tag” is the only way someone can do a research trip on a graduate teaching assistantship. A lot of pb&j sandwiches made and eaten while standing under the roller-skate rental car’s open hatch.

These have been my manual attempt at footnotes. The lack of direct footnotes is my only critique of beehiiv thus far.