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I traveled down to Boston for the AWP Conference, the first time I'd been to AWP in 5 years. It's always a busy, frenetic, overwhelming, and generally wonderful experience, made all the more wonderful this time by the presence of quite a few friends I only occasionally get to see in person these days. On Thursday, I moderated a discussion between Samuel R. Delany and Kit Reed that was one of the featured events of the conference, and on Friday and Saturday I worked the morning shift at the Rain Taxi Review of Books table, something I enjoyed very much because it meant I got to stand in one spot and talk to lots of people instead of having to move all around to talk to lots of people (which is what I spent most of the rest of the conference doing). It was a great delight to catch up with folks like Rusty Morrison and Ken Keegan of Omnidawn, Dustin Kurz of Melville House, Gavin Grant and Kelly Link of Small Beer Press, Hannah Tinti of One Story, Lawrence Schimel of Midsummer Night's Press, Parker Smathers and Stephanie Elliott of Wesleyan University Press, various folks from Unstuck, and others I'm sure I'm forgetting (sorry! you are so closely woven into my life that I take you for granted!). (Also, everyone who worked the Coffee House Press booth, because each time I walked by, I couldn't help saying, "I love your books!") I had a great conversation with someone at the Copper Canyon Press table about how they handle poetry lineation in ebooks by offering a sample line from which to calibrate, kind of like color bars on a tv. This allows the reader the flexibility to read the lines as the writer intended them, or to not. It also gave me a great excuse to buy an ebook (Laura Kasischke's Space, In Chains).

I went to panels and discussions and readings. Highlights were the joint reading/discussion by Dana Spiotta and Don DeLillo, moderated by Nan Graham, publisher and senior VP of Scribner. It was a highlight mostly because I haven't yet read anything by Spiotta, so it was a nice introduction to her, and because I've often wondered what DeLillo is like in person. He seemed pleasant enough, not particularly uncomfortable on stage, and in discussion his comments were often accompanied by a marvelously dry wit. I'm not a DeLillo fanboy — I like Underworld very much, but haven't ever warmed to the other books of his that I've read or sampled, and I positively hated White Noise. But hey, it's Don DeLillo. And it was an especially DeLilloesque moment because there were lots of warnings about taking pictures, making recordings, etc. We must abjure the age of digito-mechanical reproduction. (It was okay, they said, to use Twitter, though!) Meanwhile, because the event was in a giant auditorium, there was a massive screen up above that broadcast faces to us all. It was difficult not to look at the screen rather than the actual people.

Another great event in the same giant auditorium (indeed, immediately following the Spiotta/DeLillo event) was supposed to be a reading/discussion between Jeanette Winterson and Alison Bechdel, but Bechdel was trapped by snowfall in Cleveland, so it was Winterson alone. And if anybody can hold the attention of a giant auditorium full of writers, it's Jeanette Winterson. But still, I thought the pairing of Winterson and Bechdel was genius, and I desperately looked forward to seeing their interaction. Nonetheless, Winterson was awesome (for a somewhat similar version of the performance she gave us, see this video of her at the Sydney Opera House). I'm not quite in agreement with her Modernist self-help shtick, but I could watch her for hours, because she's a marvelous performer and a great reader of her own work. And I'm looking forward to reading Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal very much, because I'm a total sucker for her writing — reading Art & Lies at 20 was a revelatory experience, and I went on to devour just about everything else she wrote.

But the best event I saw at AWP may have been the discussion of the VIDA Count with various writers and editors. In fact, I have so many thoughts about it that I'm going to make it a separate post. [Which is now available here.]

Of course, I bought some books. Quite a few poetry books, in fact, because I've had a lack of poetry in life over the last few years, and it's a genre I love.

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Last week's Readercon was among the best of the many I have attended, for me at least. Inevitably, there wasn't enough time for anything — time to see friends, time to go to all the various panels I had hoped to go to, time to mine the book dealers' wares... Nonetheless, it was a tremendous pleasure to see so many friends and acquaintances again, as well as to be immersed in such a vibrant community of people who love to talk about books.

I've been on the Programming Committee for Readercon for the past two years now, which changes my experience a little bit, because I find myself paying closer attention than I did before to how the panels end up working in reality (after we on the committee have puzzled over their possibilities for a few months) and to how people on the panels and in the audiences respond to them. (Note: We're actively trying to expand the invitation list to Readercon. If you have any names to suggest [including yourself], please see here for more info.)

I don't love being on panels myself, because I don't really have any confidence in my ability to say anything beyond the banal in an extemporaneous situation, but I was on a couple this time, and though I don't think my contributions were anything memorable, there were some good moments. (More thoughts on panels and the current discussion of gender parity on panels at cons below.)



The two panels I was on were both on Saturday morning, which turned out to be less than ideal for me because I hadn't gotten to sleep until sometime after 2am (having been part of a long and wonderful conversation with Eric Schaller, Jeff VanderMeer, and Michael Cisco), so I was pretty exhausted. The first panel was on John Reider's excellent book Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, with the other panelists being Robert Killheffer, Darrell Schweitzer, Vandana Singh, and, as leader (that is, moderating participant), Andrea Hairston. I thank the gods of scheduling that Andrea was the leader, because her skills at moderating are a wonder to behold. I wouldn't have been leader of this panel for anything, because not only is there a potentially controversial topic, but it's the sort of topic that is wide open to unproductive tangents — for instance, it may bring out the history geek in participants or audience members to such an extent that they can't help demonstrating how much they know about exactly what happened in 322 BCE and how that is what really explains the Berlin Conference. There was a bit of this, and Andrea brilliantly brought the conversation back toward things that could be more effectively discussed in the hour we had without making the person who just couldn't help talking a lot about the Romans feel entirely squashed. (If he did, he didn't behave as if he'd been squashed.) I find it hard to stay on track during panels myself, so always appreciate a moderator who can moderate without humiliating.

I'm not sure we were able to really say anything beyond what the book itself already says, but we affirmed that its analysis is provocative, powerful, and generally convincing, and if we succeeded in sparking curiosity about the book in one or two other people, then it was a success. (Copies seemed to be selling well at the Wesleyan University Press table in the dealers' room.)

After the panel, Andrea

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Thursday 21st February is International Mother Language Day:

Linguistic and cultural diversity represent universal values that strengthen the unity and cohesion of societies. The recognition of the importance of linguistic diversity led to UNESCO ’s decision to celebrate International Mother Language Day.

The day has particular significance in Bangladesh, which is the setting for Mitali Perkins’ Rickshaw Girl. Naima, the book’s main character, has won International Mother Language Day competitions for her beautiful alpana patterns (you can see pictures here of young artists at work from February last year, when Mitali and her mother, herself an award-winning alpana painter, passed on their expertise as part of PT’s outreach programme). Rickshaw Girl is aimed at the 7-12 age-range and would make a great readaloud, especially for a mother and daughter to share. As well as overturning gender stereotyping through Naima, it highlights the positive results of microfinancing in Bangladesh, particularly for women.

And, since one of the anxieties of displacement is often the striving to balance acquiring a new language with not losing your own, this is a good time to point you in the direction of Mitali’s own favorite readaloud for 2007, Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate:

“a lyrical novel told in the voice of brave, honest Kek, a refugee from a country in Africa starting a new life without his mother, father, and brother in wintry Minnesota.”

I haven’t read it yet, but it is on my to-read list…

For reading to younger children, I recommend the bilingual I Am René, the Boy/ Soy René, el Niño by René Colato Laínez and illustrated by Fabiola Graullera Ramírez. In this delightful story, René researches his name and its cultural connotations in different languages – triggered by the arrival of a girl in his class called Renée: different spelling but horror of horrors, the same pronunciation!

If you are taking part in any activities for International Mother Language Day, do tell us about them – we’d love to hear from you.

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Due to various technical mishaps, I wasn't able to get into the AWP Bookfair on Friday to help the ever-erstwhile Clayton Kroh with the Best American Fantasy/Weird Tales table. Saturday, though, was no problem, and I spent the day in the labyrinthine world of the Bookfair -- three floors of tables and booths. It took me fifteen minutes just to find our table, placed as it was against a back wall of the farthest room, and once when I wandered out alone I managed to walk in circles for at least ten minutes before realizing the source of the profound sense of deja vu filling my brain.

Tempest Bradford stopped by, and I quickly convinced her to take over the table so I could wander around and give copies of BAF to any magazine or journal whose representatives I could convince to take one. It can be amazingly difficult to give things away at AWP, because so many people are traveling by airplane and cannot carry away piles and piles of the many things it is so easy to accumulate (although BEA is worse by an order of magnitude). But I persevered, and got to learn about a bunch of publications that were new to me. I also got to see folks I hadn't seen in a while, including Eric Lorberer of Rain Taxi, Rusty Morrison and Ken Keegan of Omnidawn, various members of the staff of Tin House (whose amazement that I no longer have a beard made me realize just how long it's been since I saw them last...), Eli Horowitz of McSweeney's, Aaron Burch of Hobart, a bunch of folks from Redivider, the wonder that is Richard Nash of Softskull/Counterpoint, and the great and glorious people of One Story, including editor Hannah Tinti, who, I learned, has a novel coming out in June: The Good Thief (Hannah's story collection Animal Crackers is excellent). I spent a bit of time chatting with Lawrence Schimel, who loaned me a lovely baby-blue bag in which to carry things. Small Beer Press was there in the force of Gavin Grant, Jed Berry, and Kelly Link, and I glanced at an advanced copy of John Kessel's upcoming collection, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence, a book all upstanding citizens will want to place on their bedside tables (no word yet on the deluxe coffee-table edition, which will feature photos of John Kessel and Jim Kelly acting out scenes from the stories). Finally, I got to talk briefly with Charles Flowers, of the Lambda Literary Foundation, who assured me that his excellent literary magazine, Bloom will, indeed, be producing a new issue soon.

And now a list of some of the journals I picked up copies of because they were new to me, though in some cases they are quite venerable publications (listed in the order of which I have pulled them out of my backpack): Third Coast, HOW, Dos Passos Review, So to Speak, Phoebe,The Yalobusha Review, Knockout, and Practice.

By the time I got back to the table, Theodora Goss had joined Tempest. Dora was at AWP to, among other things, help promote Interfictions along with her co-editor Delia Sherman, and there seemed to be a lot of interest among the AWP crowd in the book, as well as in such things as Omnidawn's Paraspheres and our Best American Fantasy. Core genre fiction is still not something that most people who attend AWP seem to get excited about, but particularly among the younger attendees, I noticed a great excitement for fiction that isn't in a strictly realist mode, fiction that draws from all sorts of different sources. Dora said a panel on fairy tales had been extremely popular, as was the panel on realist/nonrealist fiction. There was more interest in Weird Tales than I expected, too, with at least five people asking me, "Is that the Weird Tales?" -- people who seemed to think the magazine had died some years ago. It is very much alive, though, and new fiction editor Ann VanderMeer is working hard to bring its old traditions into the new century.

By the end of the day, I was completely exhausted, and my only regret was that I hadn't been able to be at the entire conference, nor did I get a chance to attend any of the panels, presentations, or parties. Chicago, though, is not so far away... Read the rest of this post

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Ha! 2 books that I read this month! In fact, 1 of them I read this week!

Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Yee

I have been accused of being anal retentive, an over-achiever, and a compulsive perfectionist, like those are bad things.

Millicent Min is a genius. It's not that she's just really smart, but certifiably a genius--she's going to be a senior in high school and has started taking classes at the local college. She's 11. She's also lonely--she's in a lot of extra-curriculars at school, but she doesn't have friends. Even in her college class, the other students don't see her as an equal and resent her presence. Other kids her age don't know how to relate to her.

Millicent's mother signed her up for volleyball this summer to try and give her daughter a "normal" childhood. At volleyball, she meets Emily. Emily seems to like her, so Millicent doesn't tell her how smart she is. She wants Emily to see her as a normal kid. As long as she can keep they lies straight, she'll be OK, right?

Lisa Yee has a great character in Millie, who, socially, is a little behind her peers even she's light years ahead of them academically. She's hilarious as she tried to navigate her new friendship with Emily, and friendships are complicated, no matter how smart you are. Yee has written several very believable characters and Millicent is extremely likable. I'm looking forward to reading Stanford Wong Flunks Big-time and So Totally Emily Ebers.

Other blog reviews: Miss Erin, Elizabeth O. Dulemba, The Tired Reader

Rickshaw Girlby Mitali Perkins

So, usually for a book to "count" as part of my have-read list, it has to be at least 100 pages OR have a quality I can't define but call "deep impact". The Big Wave is one such book.

Everyone's already reviewed this one and you other kidlit bloggers are probably familiar with Mitali as she's a frequent commentor and fellow blogger. (How did I NOT know she wrote Monsoon Summer? That's been on my to-read list forever!)

Anyway, I was really excited when this came into the library, because I'm a big fan of Mitali's blog-comments. But then I got really paranoid, because what if I didn't like it? I've told myself I'm going to review every book that I read here, and so I would but I really like Mitali and OH! THE AGONY!

But all the worry was for naught, because I did like it. And it has that elusive "deep impact" even though it's under 100 pages.

So, this is set in modern-day Bangladesh. Naima's father is a rickshaw driver that never gets a rest. She wishes she was a boy, so she would be allowed to help out. She comes up with several grand plans and schemes to possibly help and complications ensue.

I was really intrigued by the turn this book took in the end, because who would've thunk that you could so effectively introduce the concept of micro-finance to the middle-reader set?

Also, the pictures not only perfectly compliment, but really add to the story.

Check out other reviews at: My Blog, Fuse #8, Planet Esme, Phantom Scribbler, Brookeshelf, Info Dad, Readers Rants,

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