Writing

Moon Milk Review

Some pimpage, first: Rae Bryant did a fantastic job with the Moon Milk Review anthology. The book is such a beaut. I got to share the pages with these fine individuals: Lisa Marie Basile, Jennifer Hollie Bowles, Alexandra Chasin, Feng Chen, Alexis Covato, Francis DiClemente, Jim Fuess, Luisa María García Velasco, Roxane Gay, Christine Herzer, Karen Heuler, Scott Alexander Jones, Ben Loory, Jim Meirose, Kristine Ong Muslim, Gary Percesepe, Mark Reep, Laura Ellen Scott, Serena Tome, J. A. Tyler, David Wagoner, Luke Wallin, Ian Watson, Vallie Lynn Watson, David Wolf and Shellie Zacharia.

I graduated Bennington in January. There is some truth to all the MFA smack talk out there, but going to Bennington was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. There aren’t Gordon Lishes and Max Perkinses with gloves up to the elbows, ready to birth your ugly babies. You have to scrub those bloody suckers to gold all by your lonesome these days. With a couple exceptions (you slay me, Cal Morgan!), editors aren’t editors the way they used to be. (Not that I know anything about “used to be,” but I… whatever…) I just learned how to revise myself into another universe–that’s what the MFA did for me. And I got to study with Tom Piazza, Amy Hempel, David Gates and Alice Mattison, each kicking my ass in profound and wonderful ways. And our class bonded tighter than cannibals (that’s taste-likes-chicken tight). And Sven Birkerts stood at the podium at graduation and told us and our families and friends that Jan. 2011 had the best lectures and readings of any class that’s come through Bennington. And I can’t believe next month I won’t be back in Vermont chain smoking, singing at the End of the World, talking about Chris Adrian or Breece D’J Pancake or whoever was the writer blowing our collective minds that term.

Other things… I got a new job as a local editor at Patch. With the newspaper industry dying off, I never thought I’d be a reporter again. And I love reporting. Not necessarily the J-school idea of what journalism should be, but going to the chicken dinner fundraisers, the 5Ks, the planning board meetings and shaking hands and introducing yourself. The “small” stuff, which isn’t small at all. There’s a whole narrative behind a town, and you collect the bits and pieces of it until the history and landscape becomes whole for you. It’s similar to the feeling you get when you’re six months to a year into a first draft of a novel and you’re just living in it. It’s a great place to be.