eh, what do I know?

After the AIW/Mason Fiction Seminar last Sunday, Art Taylor interviewed me about some of the stuff I had to say about net publishing and the evolution of short fiction. It was fun.

A Fat Tuesday

Happy Mardi Gras! Well, it’s only Tuesday and my week is officially memorable: Just got a story accepted by the fantastic Northville Review. Friday I get my picture taken because it appears that I have ‘served’ for 15 years at Mason (I’m a Lifer, probably). And Saturday I’m on a new media panel for a fiction writing seminar, with 10 minutes to talk about the evolving aesthetics/identity of short fiction, publishing, and teaching writing.

At least that’s what I said I’d talk about, but lately I’ve been thinking about online journals and the re-emergence of Editorship. As a veteran of a major MFA program, I have complicated feelings about personality-driven writing & lit situations, but far and away my favorite journals are ones that require the selection genius and idiosyncrasy of their founders.

Local writing thingies, coming up

must be the season, but there are a number of small one-day events coming up. I'm paneling at this first event Feb 28, co-sponsored by GMU and American Independent Writers, and David Erlewine is paneling at the second--Conversations and Connections, April 11.

Fiction Writing Seminar Saturday, February 28, 2009
George Mason University, Johnson Center, Campus Cinema

8:00 a.m. Registration opens and continental breakfast available
8:45 a.m. Opening Remarks: William Miller, GMU and John Curry, AIW
9:00-9:15 a.m. Plenary speech-Jeffery Deaver
9:15-10:30 a.m. Literary Fiction versus Genre Fiction
Moderator John Gilstrap
Panel: Donna Andrews, Alan Cheuse, James Grady
10:45-12:00 p.m. Novelists who write Reviews and Criticism
Moderator Nandini Lal
Panel: Louis Bayard, Sudlip Bose, Art Taylor
1:00-1:30 p.m. Keynote speech--Marita Golden
1:30-2:45 p.m. New Media and Publishing Creative Writing
Moderator Reb Livingston
Panel: Mark Athitakis, Bernadette Geyer, Laura Ellen Scott
3:00-4:15 p.m. Second Novels
Moderator: TBA
Panel: Katharine Davis, Dallas Hudgens, Alex MacLennan

Registration info

Conversations and Connections, April 11 (most panelists TBA)
To be held at the Johns Hopkins University Advanced Writing Program campus in downtown Washington, DC.

8:30 Registration
9:00 Welcome
9:15 Session One
Writing Your Novel: Start to Finish
Money for Writers: Where it is and how to get it (Panel: Catherine Leila Emery, Gwydion Suilebhan, Dan Brady)
Creative Nonfiction: Where are the boundaries? Do they exist? (Panel: Kim Kupperman, Paul Maliszewski, Dustin Beall Smith, Kinda Underhill)
Craft Lecture: Sentence Power (by Ed Perlman)
10:30 Session Two
Poetry panel
The Digital Literary Landscape
Contest panel
Craft Lecture: Fighting Writer’s Block with Play and Experimental Prompts (by Matt Kirkpatrick)
12:15 Lunch and Speed Dating
2:00 Featured Speaker: Amy Hempel
3:30 Session Three
Agent panel
Flash Fiction
Voice in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry
Craft Lecture: Writing Sex Scenes (by Zachary Benivides)

Registration info

American Independent Writers: Fiction Writing Seminar

I'm not going to AWP this year, but on Feb 28 I'll be on a panel for an AIW fiction writing seminar to be hosted here at Mason. The panel I'm on is "New Media and Publishing Creative Writing," and it will be moderated by the awesome Reb Livingston

other panel topics:

Literary Fiction versus Genre Fiction
Novelists who write Reviews and Criticism
Second Novels

This looks like a very cool event I just stumbled into, despite the fact that the links to AIW and the seminar have just gone kaplooey. Indie writers suck.

update: the links are fixed, for the time being. Here's the main site, and here's the seminar info