Long live the Writers Center! Last weekend was the Writers Center's 30th Anniversary. Robert Olen Butler read his imagined missing 18 minutes from the Nixon White House Tapes--- no exaggeration, this was the best, the funniest reading I have ever attended. Many rounds of applause for founders Al Lefcowitz and and Jane Fox, and also for director Greg Robison and the staff, who are all doing a great job. In attendance: Jim and Kate Lehrer, novelists Ann McLaughlin, Kate Blackwell, poets galore, and the evervescent Wendi Kaufman, aka The Happy Booker. If you are anywhere near the Washington DC area and want to try a writing workshop, folks, the Writers Center is the place to come.
The Associated Writing Programs (AWP) Feb 28- March 3, 2007 Conference in Atlanta Georgia is now online at www.awpwriter.org This mega-powow will have over 300 events, including presentations from Lee Smith, C.D. Wright, John Barth, Michael Martone, Anne Beattie, Charles Wright, Kay Gibbons, Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth Spencer, Les Murray, Tayari Jones, Coleman Barks, Rita Dove and many others. I'll be there at the Tameme table in the bookfair-- we've got our first chapbook ~ cuaderno just out: Mexican writer Agustin Cadena's "Carne verde, piel negra ~ An Avocado from Michoacan"-- and I'll also be on two panels. More about those anon.
