I had a good, earned hangover this morning, which is to say: last night was very fun.

We went to the Folio/Loft/Sackett Street/Slice/Godine/Black Sparrow AWP Happy Hour (which Alex&Alex had told us about/invited us to), and it was in a very swanky “speak easy” style basement bar with delicious free cocktails and food and we talked to literary people and strangers and made friends and I met the woman from St. Louis who wrote the memoir about the Veiled Prophets and it was all very lovely. We then continued the party at a fancy hotel bar and then later at the place where we were staying until very late, and we ate leftover enchiladas, and it was really, really fun.

But I did have a reasonable hangover this morning. Ah well.

The panels today were:

  1. Jules! Doing their panel about running inclusive reading series. The panel was good, Jules did great, and the other panelists were rad AF. Also “rad” seems to be my word for this conference (Thanks, having worked at a bike shop…).
  2. “Editorial Perspectives on Experimental Fiction,” which was also pretty great. Useful, an excuse to go do a little glad-handing and chatting at the book fair later, and a good reminder that experimental work needs to still work, ya know? It’s hard to do and worth while.

Then there was book fair walking, more Tex-Mex food, more book fair walking, talking, BSsing, and some work. Sent some things to the people I said I would. Revised a little, made one thing a better title, planned some more revisions and rewrites. Planned my next week, which will be very busy work-wise but hopefully spiritually chill. We’ll see. There is a lot to do but it’s all exciting and things I want to.

Now we’re chilling and the conference is basically over and we are planning on making our next move. Not sure what tonight will bring but probably something. Tomorrow I fly home to Boston, to Alia, whom I miss terribly. I am having fun though. This kind of empty AWP was kind of nice, in part because it was kind of empty, though it sucks that it sounds like almost none of the small presses sold enough books, which is a shame. I did what I could, but I also have limited money and bookshelf space and time. I did get some free lit journals for the MFA lounge at school, so that’s cool.

I need a little more coffee but feel excited to be working and writing (which is the only fucking point of going to this, aside from partying), and so:

Off to the next adventure.