Part I.
My book, Becoming the Villainess, is finally out! Time to sing the book song, book book book…
You can purchase a signed copy from me here
or you can get it from Steel Toe Books here
or from Amazon
or from B&N
or you can order it from Open Books, the poetry-only bookstore in Seattle…
Buy it! Tell your friends to buy it! Then buy it some more! 🙂

Part II.
Okay, dragged myself to another reading (despite the fact that I’ve been fighting off some kind of killer virus that requires me to sleep 14 hours a day) – this time Mary Ruefle, Tyehimba Jess (author of Leadbelly) and Peter Gizzi. Tyehimba was a great performer, and his persona poems about the musician and songwriter Leadbelly, especially those in the voice of his guitar, very accomplished. Mary was direct and unembellished in her reading style, and read new work, as yet unpublished, that was both wittier and packed more emotion that any of her previous work I’ve read. Ruefle quote: “Writing is a type of listening…when I was younger I thought it was about what I had to say, now I know it is about listening. “
In other news, I finished the hideous and greatly feared essay of the so-called “essay semester.” So now I can concentrate on “real” work…
For Miyazaki fans – Cartoon Network is showing “My Neighbor Totoro” this Thursday in prime time – 7:30 PM West Coast time. Park yourselves and any impressionable young children in front of the tv, and prepare to see a children’s movie done the way all children’s movies should be – with heart, imagination, whimsy, and spiritual depth.