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AWP 2011: Building the Literary Robot

I will join James Engelhardt (Prairie Schooner), Scott Lindenbaum (Electric Literature), Zach Dodson (Featherproof Books), Zachary Schomburg (Octopus Magazine) and Travis Kurowski (Luna Park Review) at the AWP conference 2011, held from February 2-5, 2011 in Washington, DC, for a panel on “Building the Literary Robot: The lit journal as new media.” Here’s the official listing;

Building the Literary Robot: The lit journal as new media
Lit has gone viral, adapted to fit Twitter feeds, iPhone apps, and social networks, and fashioned into flash animation for posting on YouTube. How do literary journals step into these new, far-reaching modes of publishing? What role will e-literature have in contemporary publishing and the teaching of creative writing? What will this mean to the traditional short story, poem, and essay? Writers and editors of online and print literary journals tell how they’ve explored new e-lit territory.

At the Noguchi Museum

At the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi Museum
At the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi Museum
At the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi Museum
At the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi Museum
At the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi Museum
At the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi Museum
At the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi MuseumAt the Noguchi Museum
At the Noguchi Museum
At the Noguchi Museum

For her first birthday, we took Nina to the Isamu Noguchi Museum in Astoria. Slideshow.

Uncle Stevie

I met Steve in a Grateful Dead forum, looking for tickets for a Jones Beach show in 2003. He had the ticket but needed a ride, so I picked him up in Rego Park on the way. His seats were much better than mine, and during setbreak, he came with someone else’s ticket and stubbed me down to the floor, Bobby side. Steve was great at dodging security. I’d never met anyone more enthusiastic than him, and as long as the music played, he was a dervish. He was also a master of the ground score, picking up after the show whatever people had dropped.

We hit it off, and over the next couple of years, I saw a lot of concerts with Steve. Every summer, he invited Marcy and me out to the house he’d rented on Fire Island with his boyfriend Ray. There were lazy beach days, lavish dinners, and karaoke. The last time we visited, in 2005, I shot some video and later shaped it into a short movie I called Uncle Stevie. For some reason, there’s a lot of death in it.

I never got to show it to Steve. He died later that summer, of an overdose of Tylenol. I don’t know much else about it; there was a mix-up when the call came and for the longest time I thought it was Ray who’d died. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t reach Steve. When I finally heard, he was long buried. I filed the movie away and never looked at it again.

It’s been five years now, and I often think of Steve. Today, I dug out Uncle Stevie, and it’s still as strange and creepy as I remember. It’s also good to see Steve again. I miss him — and he’s missed a lot of great shows.

The Sloppy Heads

The Sloppy Heads played in Williamsburg the other night, and I took my brand-new camera for a spin. The Canon T2i takes both stills and HD video. Love it so far. And hey: go download the Sloppy Heads’ EP, First Gasp!