I Don’t Even

I pick this blog up again after a 4 month absence, and will begin with the usual blog apology: I’m sorry to have left this off. Especially as, time after time this year, when I have been most ambivalent about blogging, I have had people tell me how much the blog meant to them.

Where have I been? Well, a lot of places. In literal terms, I spent the spring semester teaching at the University of Texas – Austin, in their MFA program, and living on Austin’s East side as I did so. I returned to New York City with a new appreciation for brisket and kombucha on tap.

After that, I went to Boston to teach at Grub Street, then to Korea, on family business, and then gave a reading with Paul LaFarge at the Wesleyan Writers’ Conference. I am back in New York City, and will be teaching a fiction workshop at Columbia University’s MFA in writing this fall.

In a plot twist, two poems of mine have been published, after many years of not writing or at least not publishing poems. I have a new poem up over at the Awl, “I Don’t Even”. Another poem, SAINT, is in the current issue of Azalea.

I have also been doing some reviewing. specifically, I reviewed Clifford Chase’s memoir, The Tooth Fairy, for Slate, and Chris Abani’s novel, The Secret History of Las Vegas, for The Barnes and Noble Review. I interviewed Helen Oyeyemi for Buzzfeed Books.

I also published two big personal essays this spring, a long time in the making. The first, “My Parade”, about how I began as an MFA doubter, and then went to Iowa, appears in n+1’s MFA vs NYC anthology and is excerpted online in full at Buzzfeed. The second, Mr. and Mrs. B, about my time as a cater waiter for William F. Buckley, is currently print only, in Apology, vol. 3.

Looking to the future, this fall, a new short story of mine, “The Insincere House”, will appear in the next Tin House. And as for news on The Queen of the Night, I’m currently making my way through an audit of 9 changes I made to the manuscript this year, and will have scheduling news soon.