Mason Alumni Appreciation Workshop & Reading

So this Saturday I'm running this thing--I'm always hearing from graduates that now they are out of school, they feel untethered to a writing community. Even though there are plenty of readings and workshops locally, I think a good portion of our former students would like a little more help entering a scene, and I totally get that. I cooked up this idea after the Dzanc workshops in March, although our thing is not so much a fundraiser simply because all the money we've raised is going toward paying the small group facilitators, and maybe some lunch for me, Tara Laskowski, and Art Taylor.

Our thing will go like this:

10am--Poet Wade Fletcher will talk about Metro area opportunities and resources, like readings series, workshops, festivals, etc. He's very good at this, having helped run the Cheryl's Gone series as well as Mason's Fall for the Book festival.

103am -12 Workshop session one

12-1pm Lunch discussion with me, Art Taylor, and Tara Laskowski. The topic is writing after Mason, or as we more delicately put it on the flyer, "Writing After Graduation." You know Art from his mystery & crime fiction, his blog interviews, and his reviews in the Washington Post. Tara's got a ton of great stories out there and is now an editorial force at Smokelong Quartery.

1-2:30pm Workshop Session two

2:30-4pm Free & Open to the Public
Readings by Joe Hall, Mel Nichols, and Kyle Semmel. They'll each read about 10-15 minutes, so we will use the rest of the time for an "open mic," prioritizing the workshop participants. Of course I have no mic set up at this time, so it may just be a shouting event.

If you want to come out, the reading will be in the Johnson Center Bistro (lowest floor in the JC). Parking is free on the green areas of this map:
http://parking.gmu.edu/pdf files/parkingmap09.pdf

How the reading went

Coming off the high of participating in the Cheryl's Gone reading series last Thursday at DC's Big Bear Cafe, I got a great start on three new stories this weekend. Thanks to Wade Fletcher and Joe Hall for inviting me, and special thanks to Adam, Mike, Tara, Emily, and Art for coming out. The place was packed, and I ready two pubbed pieces ("Dusty Bastards" and "Do you know what it means to miss") along with two in progress pieces from the ghost-y vsf collection I'm putting together. Very positive response to the the collection concept, which has got me juiced.

The Cafe is lovely, serving excellent hot chocolate which took the edge off of having to scale mini glaciers to get there.

I read with poets James Belflower, who runs the Potlach Poetry exchange project, and Maureen Thorson of the In Your Ear reading series. Maureen was a riot, and James (who traveled from Albany) is an amazing fit in the DC Poetry scene. His book is Commuter, from Instance Press.

Fall For the Book

So here at George Mason we’re in the midst of Fall for the Book, a free festival with too many events, most of which take place on campus, with the others hosted elsewhere in the community. This year’s lineup is the hippest and the best.

Last night Sherman Alexie kicked ass, and yesterday afternoon I listened to Staceyann Chin give a thrilling performance in the plaza just below my office window. Hoping to go to the Rae Armantrout/ Ron Silliman reading tonight, and for sure I’m dropping into the Dave Housley/Reb Livingston panel on local literary magazines tomorrow. I’m gutted that I have to miss D. Harlan Wilson on Friday, but I’m sure he’ll get a crowd.

The Festival is in its 10th year, and is run by my colleagues Bill Miller, Art Taylor, Ruth Goodwin, and Wade Fletcher. With easily 130 panelists, readers, and performers to wrangle, and writers being what they are, the FFTB team deals with behind the scenes drama like you wouldn’t believe. But you also have happy accidents, like learning that Nathan Leslie lives in your own back yard (he introduced a speaker at an FFTB event hosted by Northern Virginia Community College).