To begin with - damn is 9 hours a long time to be in your car! Okay, that out of the way, what a fantastic weekend!!
Having been kindly invited to moderate a panel at the Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival, I left here Friday a.m. early enough to arrive in Carbondale, IL in time to check into my hotel and get over to Southern Illinois University's Student Center right at the end of their fiction panel with Kevin Brockmeier, Roxana Robinson, Amanda Filipacchi, and Lamar Herrin. This meant I had missed readings Thursday night by Donald Platt, and Lamar Herrin, as well as the earlier poetry panel with Platt, Jennifer Maier, Susanna Childress, and Crystal Williams.
Walking in, I met Jason Lee Brown, who had set my panel up, Desiree Dighton, who was kind enough to both hand me a check (amazingly enough, I was paid for this trip), as well as being the first student to lean in and whisper to me "Mike Magnuson wanted me to give you his cell phone number," and Andrew Lewellen, a grad student who is originally from Ann Arbor. And, as people began shuffling out of the auditorium, I met Pinckney Benedict. Pinckney and I have been corresponding since late 1989 (though, with a chunk of a few years in absentia), but this was the first time I've had the pleasure of shaking his hand and actually talking with him in person.
The deal with Magnuson was, he's on sabbatical this semester and has been trying to lay low - so any time somebody wanted to let me know they had access to him for me, it was very hush hush, creating an almost spy-like feel to it.
With a break before afternoon readings, I headed back to my hotel to crash for a few hours, but noticed a used bookstore, Bookworm, on the way and swung in. Great move - I found Charles McNair's Land O'Goshen, which I've been looking for everywhere for a month now with no luck. McNair is Paste Magazine's book editor and his reviews have been so dead on, I hope to find I like his fiction as well.
So, I got back to the hotel and was thinking I'd stay there until going to meet Pinckney and his wife, Laura, for dinner. I foolishly called Magnuson though, and he chided me into going to the readings, telling me the university was paying for my presence, and I should be there for the students to talk to. While I reminded him that until my panel the next morning, not a student in the building would know who the hell I was, he was still convincing enough that I changed and went back to the auditorium. I'd missed Brockmeier and Maier reading, but caught the last two and a half poems by Susanna Childress, including a finale where she sang one of Dunne's Holy Sonnets a cappella - it was pretty freaking amazing. Then, Amanda Filipacchi read from (I believe) her third, and latest, novel. She read from two sections, and the protagonist's voice was really very funny, as was the story itself.
From there it was out to dinner with the Benedicts, who took me to Hunan's, a nice Chinese restaurant (I'd been warned by Jason and Andrew to make sure it was Hunan's and not the other Chinese restaurant in the area, as the last time Andrew ate there he ended up laying down pretty much right at the table. Anyhow, the meal was really nice - got to talk to Pinckney about his previous work that I've slobbered over before, his forthcoming novel and short story collection, his moving from Hollins to SIU, etc. as well as find out more about Laura's book due out around this time next year, if not a little earlier. Some of Pinckney's grad students were there as well and sent over a Zombie for him in an interesting head shaped mug.
After a very long week of meetings and late nights, then the very early wake-up and nine hour drive, I think it took all of four or five minutes after getting back to my room for me to fall dead asleep.
I got up really early again on Saturday, about 4:30 a.m. - partly out of falling asleep so early the night before (around 10 or so), and partly because I really wanted to make sure I was ready to moderate the panel. I'd moderated that editor panel at the AABF earlier in the year and went in woefully unprepared, putting my editors in the horrible position of answering lame questions and needing to elaborate on their responses to kill time for me. So, I got ready and went to the Student Center at about 9 a.m., nearly three hours early, and had the area mostly to myself for an hour or so. As I was wrapping up scribbling questions and notes down, I looked up and the first person arriving to the area was none other than my great buddy, Kyle Minor, who had woken up ridiculously early himself and driven straight through from Columbus to see the panel and hang out for the day. Not too much later, Jason showed up and the auditorium was opened up.
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