I want to congratulate a friend and poet whose MS I’ve had the honor to work with, Jeff Walt, on winning the Gertrude Press chapbook contest for Vows. Jeff is an amazing poet and I’ve been lucky to read his work on and off for the past few years and I keep telling him, “It’s fantastic!” You have to buy his chapbook to see what I mean.

In odd news, see this camp for women who want to become “Alias”-style spies. The knife-fighting class sounds interesting; the “sexy dance” class just sounds funny.

There’s been a lot of “dust up” in the blogging world lately. Most of it just makes me feel depressed. There’s nothing worse than thinking about the financial and political aspects of MFAs. I hate worrying about money and prestige and fame and the poetry point system. I’m still a naive idealist in that respect, I’m afraid.
In good-things-coming-from bad, though, I’m excited that Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu, motivated by frustration towards opportunties for women in the literary community (cough, AWP, cough) are starting their own women’s lit conference.

I think we’re leaning towards Napa as our next place of living. Bonus? It’s 14 percent cheaper than Carlsbad, according to some cost-of-living calculators.