Last Day at PNWA and an Interview

Thanks to Jessica Goodfellow for this thoughtful interview with me about my new book, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, up on her blog. I talk about growing up in Oak Ridge, cramming scientific language in poetry, and more. Jessica’s new book, Mendeleev’s Mandala, just came out from Mayapple Press, and you should check it out.

I’m off to give my talk on “PR for Poets” at my last appearance at the PNWA conference today at 2 PM. The first night I gave a reading but managed to get in a fender bender at the airport exit ramp right before, the second day’s autograph party was pretty low stress, like a mini-version of the AWP Bookfair (though a doctor’s visit beforehand revealed my partially collapsed lung hasn’t recovered very much over the last few weeks, which was sad news), and hopefully I can get through today with no major mishaps! It’s been interesting to attend this conference for the first time. It’s mostly a genre-writing-themed get-together with a little side of poetry but it’s been nice to get together with writers and talk about books. The first night’s reading went to 11 and we didn’t get home til after midnight; the second night ended a little after ten and we got home at 11, so you can imagine tonight I am ready to sleep, sleep, sleep!