Geek Girl Con 2012 – Notes from, including run-ins with Last Unicorn artists and Buffy Writers and More…

So, I woke up at 5:30 AM this morning to make it on time to my panel this morning at Geek Girl Con, and my biggest worry that my panelist friend and I would be greeted by an empty room at the conference center because we were the very first panel slot on the Sunday after the late Saturday night parties…but lo, there were about twenty bright-eyed and etc audience folks waiting for me as I breathlessly arrived, fired up the PowerPoint, and launched into a paper on pop culture, zombie stripper body image problems, superheroes and monsters, and other “Geek Girl Poet” matters. Afterwards Lana Ayers (my co-panelist) and I wandered the vendor fair and looked at art, then signed books for a surprising number of buyers – there is hope, people, for a poetry-buying audience, but it’s not poets buying the poetry – it’s geeks!  I have seen the future of poetry – and it might be appealing to this kind of audience.

Two great meetings – the artist behind several comic books and the beautiful graphic novel relaunch of The Last Unicorn, Renae De Liz (check out her great rendering of Wonder Woman and the Womanthology, a collection of women comic book artists’ work she put together – a gorgeous hardback books with proceeds going to charity – from female artists, ages 7 to ninety something. There’s something incredibly beautiful about an anthology so inclusive, so lovingly put together. The other really exciting encounter for me was chatting with Buffy (and Once Upon a Time) writer Jane Espenson, and explaining to her how last year at the same con I was interviewed by a news-person who mistook me for her because we had signings at the same time. (All writers look alike to the media, I joked. Which might be sort of true.)

Where to Find Me At Geek Girl Con Sunday

Geek Girl Con at the Seattle Conference Center (Across the Street from the Convention Center)

My presentation:  

Monster Brides, Robots, Superheroines, and Anime Girls: Geek Girl Poets!
What do monster brides, robots, comic book superheroines, and anime girls have in common? Poetry! These geeky awesome Northwest poets celebrate the women of the pop culture fringes in their work. They will read some poetry, discuss the inspirations for their work, and point readers towards exploration of even more geeky girl poets!
Lana Ayers and Jeannine Hall Gailey (Tiffany Midge had to cancel)
Sunday Room 204 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM  (Yes, it’s early. Bring coffee!)

University Bookstore Table Signing, in case you want to ask questions or talk or get a copy of one of my books signed – 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM

I’ll also be wondering around the vendor area after my presentation, probably buying comics and various geeky wonderful trinket-type things.

I’ll try to post about the Con tomorrow night…wish us luck!

Geek Girl Poets and Publishers Disappearing

Working on a presentation (with Lana Ayers) for Geek Girl Con on “Monster Brides, Zombies, and Superheroes: Girls Write Geek Poetry” (which will happen Sunday 10:30 AM at the Seattle Conference Center.) Am trying to decide which poems to include, handout versus no handouts, and I’m already looking forward to walking around the book/art fair afterwards and checking out local comic art, cool writers and artists, etc.

There has been a sad thing I’ve been noticing – University and small presses disappearing…People announcing on Facebook that a book will go out of print soon, or that their book has been cancelled. New Orleans University Press is being dissolved and the person who ran their press AND their MFA program is being let go (and it turns out he was an adjunct, just like me – easy to let go!) You can read more about it here. A lot of small presses haven’t been able to weather the fluctuations – with Borders closing, and small independent bookshops struggling, and an uncertain future for both e-books and print books…Anyway, it feels like a shrinking pool of both buyers and producers of poetry books.

Which leads me that bad news I’ve been hinting about. Along with being super busy planning Poet Laureate stuff, trying to get a non-existent art scene to exist in my city, teaching, freelance writing, reviewing, and trying to be a poet, I’ve been fighting against some bad news that left me floored and feeling sad in a way I wasn’t expecting. 

I won’t be able to make any announcement for a while yet, but if you’d like a print copy of She Returns to the Floating World, you’d probably better order it now. You can order it from Amazon, from me, directly from Kitsune Books for a few more months. I think Open Books in Seattle has a few copies left as well. It seems the lifespan of my second book will be shorter than the first, just two years. More about what this means about my third book in another post…

Language that Doctors Use and Toughing It Out For Poetry

There is a certain language that doctors use that makes one nervous. Once such type of language was uttered at one of my (multiple) specialist appointments this week: “You’re so brave.” When doctors start calling you brave, you start to worry. In the television movie of the week, that is never a good sign.

So, some health problems (involving, among other things, ultrasounds, EKGs, emergency room trips for loss of vision, and such fun) have been inconveniently interrupting my summer schedule of readings and gatherings. But we still managed to pull it together for Wednesday night’s Cincinnati Review reading at the Richard Hugo House, where I got to read with Don Bogen and a bunch of Seattle poetry glittering literati – Martha Silano, Carolyn Wright, Rebecca Hoogs, Megan Snyder-Camp (whom I’d somehow managed to have never met before that night,) Kelly Davio, and Priscilla Long (all pictured below.) What a great group, right?

I had a wonderful time and it was a beautiful night – that kind of 70-degree sunny evening that has been rare this year. Driving back over the bridge, the full moon was yellow and had cloud wisps over it, and a bald eagle on the bridge was silhouetted against it in the half-light. Those kinds of moments – moonlight and eagles and the water of Lake Washington – those are what make living in the Northwest worth it.

When you think about what is worth doing in life – what is worth sacrificing for, what is worth doing with your time – I rarely dream of living more hours of hospital visits and doctor’s offices, tests and record-searching. I don’t like focusing on the part of me – that is, for me, mostly the physical body – that doesn’t always work correctly. When I’m told that I’m so cheerful for someone with the problems I have, I say “what’s the alternative?” and I mean it. You either embrace what you have and keep driving, or…what? Dissolve into melancholia? Bah.

Again, in between doctor’s appointments this week, I’ve been working on an essay about speculative poetry, a review of a really good poetry book, a presentation for Geek Girl Con that I’m hoping I’ll be well enough to give. I wrote a poem. I even tried to plan some Redmond Poet Laureate stuff, wrangling budgets and meetings and contracts. This is the work I’d like to do, the me I like the focus on. I’ve had a bit of a setback as writer in the last few months too, some bad news that I can’t share yet but has really punched me in the gut with disappointment. You can’t avoid the sad or bad or hard things about life, or about being a writer, how transient everything is. I keep being reminded. You just keep doing the work.

We don’t get to choose much about lives, but we can choose what to do with time we’re given.

Where I’ll be in the next ten days…

If you’re looking to catch me around the Seattle area in the next next ten days, you’re in luck!

First: Tonight, 6 PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern, I’ll be the featured guest at Collin Kelly and Deb Ager’s Twitter #poetparty, so show up, ask questions, etc!

Wednesday night, 7 PM, I’ll be reading a couple of poems at The Richard Hugo House as part of the “Greetings From Cincinnati Review” reading, along with wonderful local poets like Kelly Davio, Martha Silano, Megan Synder-Camp, Caroylne Wright, Rebecca Hoogs…anyway, it will be super fun! So a great place to hang out, meet Don Bogen, The Cincinnati Review‘s Poetry Editor, and hear some poetry from some wonderful poets!

Then, next weekend, during Geek Girl Con, I’ll be giving a presentation on Geek Girl Poetry: Monsters, Zombies, and Superheroes, at 10:30 AM on Sunday August 10. The whole con takes place downtown, and it sold out last year, so get there early for tickets! I’ll be book-signing afterwards and the most fun part is hanging out and chatting with folks like Gail Simone and Jane Espenson and all the heroines from your pop culture obsessions etc…(Last year, I was mistaken for Jane Espenson by a television reporter. I had to break the news that I was not, in fact, Jane. But I do love her!)