Well, technically held up at the Indianapolis International Airport for now, which turns out is a quaint habitat for the blog before the storm. Accompanied by a lively crew of fellow faculty and students past and present, your’s truly will be repping the Butler MFA program in Seattle at the 2014 Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference.

This will be my first trip to AWP, which I’m guessing will feel a lot like a degenerate gambler’s maiden voyage to Vegas. I fully expect to be needled with literary stimuli until I gradually unravel like a lambswool sweater.

Keep checking the blog the next few days for reflections, photos, haikus scribbled on cocktail napkins, and the invaluable opportunity to enjoy Seattle vicariously through a few friends, no umbrella necessary.

There will be approximately 13,000 writers in town for the conference, which is close to the number of programs offered. It’s taken me the duration of my four-hour delay at the airport just to read through the schedule and earmark a few events to highlight here. Come back to the blog for detailed scholarly reviews of each panel (just kidding, I’ll just regale you with the lurid details).

R119. The Third Degree: Why Writers Pursue Additional Education Beyond the Bachelor’s and Master’s. (Fred Leebron,  Andrew Levy,  Nadine Meyer,  Margaret MacInnis,  Brighde Mullins) In this time of shrinking job markets, a third degree, with its promise of financial support over two to six years, can seem pretty enticing. Such third degrees include: same MFA in same genre, MFA in different genre, MA plus MFA, and on to a PhD. But is a third degree worth the time and space it will take up in your brain? This panel will feature writers who have more than one graduate degree and what it did and didn’t do for them.

That’s Butler’s own Andy Levy on the panel. He’s going to tell us if we need PhDs. My piggy bank back home is quaking.

R174. Walt Whitman’s Niece: Poetry and Popular Music.(Matt Hart,  Steve Dickison,  Julia Bloch,  Harmony Holiday,  Jeffrey Sirkin) Popular music and its images reflect our changing values, desires, and identities, and offer poets a rich source of material and a key into social, political, and economic realities. Taking on punk, jazz, R&B, and celebrity culture, this panel explores the possibilities and implications of engaging with popular music through poetry, thinking not only about how poetry can illuminate popular music, but how music can help us reimagine poetry as a force of resistance and transformation.

This is where I get to find out if poet Matt Hart is in fact Walt Whitman’s nice. Somehow it didn’t come up in conversation when we read together at Franklin College earlier this fall (self-plug alert).

R208. I’m Just Not That Into You: Unsympathetic Characters in Fiction. (Irina Reyn,  Hannah Tinti,  Lynne Sharon Schwartz,  Ryan Harbage,  Maud Newton) American readers, workshops, and editors are often partial to sympathetic characters, but where does that leave contemporary Humbert Humberts and Anna Kareninas? A panel consisting of writers, editors, and an agent will address likeability in fiction. Is it crucial that our characters be sympathetic? Do we expect more likeable characters in fiction written by female rather than male writers? How does an agent approach the submission process if the novel’s protagonist is deemed unsympathetic?

I feel like the topic of Humbert Humbert comes up in conversations with my writer friends every time there is mixed company and a few drinks involved. This might make me an unlikeable person by association. You know who’s definitely not unlikeable? Maud Newton. She came to Butler a year ago, and everyone was smitten.

R218A. Beef Jerky, Bras, and Car Parts: What We Write About When We Write for Money. (Rachel Kessler,  Anastacia Tolbert,  Matthew Dickman,  Jan Wallace,  Ryan Boundinot) F. Scott Fitzgerald did it, Salman Rushdie did it, Don DeLillo did it – it is no surprise that many serious writers have earned their rent money by writing copy for advertisements. The poets and novelists on this panel discuss their anecdotal experiences of technical and review writing (including about lingerie, car parts, and porn)—and how the peculiarities of this work sustained, flattened, inspired, or challenged their own literary writing and sense of self. Sellouts? Or workhorses? You decide.

That title, right?

R278. The Literary Legacy of Nirvana and Kurt Cobain.(Matthew Batt,  Melanie Rae Thon,  Ryan Boudinot,  Jason Skipper,  Jacob Paul) “He saved us all,” says fellow Washington native Sherman Alexie of Kurt Cobain. Though neither Cobain nor Nirvana created the “Seattle sound,” they did more than any other band to lionize and catapult it, resulting in a legacy that spread beyond music and into life, politics, and literature. On this, the 20th anniversary of Cobain’s death, panelists will reflect on the literary influence of Nirvana, as well as the impact and aftermath of Cobain’s life and death.

When in Seattle . . .

Poet Lorna Dee Cervantes, luminary of Chicana literature, will bare her heart and her heritage during her Visiting Writers Series appearance at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12, at the Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall.

As a child growing up in San Francisco, Cervantes was urged by her parents to suppress her Native American and Mexican roots for her own protection. But Spanish returned to her tongue as soon as she found her voice as a poet.

It’s appropriate that the title of Cervantes’ American Book Award-winning collection Emplumada, published in 1981, doesn’t have a direct English translation, but instead is a mash-up of words meaning “pen flourish” and “feathers.” Not merely a harbinger of the wordplay to come, the inventive language invites the reader to consider multiple translations of her words, which often chronicle complex dilemmas related to identity, gender, and nationality.

In one of the collection’s most notable poems, “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway,” Cervantes watches the city winds shake the limbs of her family tree. Having at one time lived with her mother and grandmother under the same roof, the poet finds herself still torn between opposing perspectives. In her mother’s estimation, Cervantes and her grandmother both “get nothing but shit” for “being soft.” Yet the poet sees wisdom in the eldest woman’s ways.

Before rain I notice seagulls.
They walk in flocks,
cautious across lawns; splayed toes,
indecisive beaks. Grandma says
seagulls mean storm.

In California in the summer,
mockingbirds sing all night.
Grandma says they are singing for their nesting wives.
“they don’t leave their families
borrachando.”

She likes the ways of birds,
respects how they show themselves
for toast and a whistle.

She believes in myths and birds.
She trusts only what she builds
with her own hands.

A self-made success, Cervantes literary career has spanned nearly four decades, earning her additional accolades including the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, the Paterson Prize for Poetry, and a Latino Literature Award.

Don’t miss a chance to see an empowering poet with your own eyes. And to warm your ears with birdsongs from a California summer.

Poet Lorna Dee Cervantes, luminary of Chicana literature, will bare her heart and her heritage during her Visiting Writers Series appearance at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12, at the Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall.

As a child growing up in San Francisco, Cervantes was urged by her parents to suppress her Native American and Mexican roots for her own protection. But Spanish returned to her tongue as soon as she found her voice as a poet.

It’s appropriate that the title of Cervantes’ American Book Award-winning collection Emplumada, published in 1981, doesn’t have a direct English translation, but instead is a mash-up of words meaning “pen flourish” and “feathers.” Not merely a harbinger of the wordplay to come, the inventive language invites the reader to consider multiple translations of her words, which often chronicle complex dilemmas related to identity, gender, and nationality.

In one of the collection’s most notable poems, “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway,” Cervantes watches the city winds shake the limbs of her family tree. Having at one time lived with her mother and grandmother under the same roof, the poet finds herself still torn between opposing perspectives. In her mother’s estimation, Cervantes and her grandmother both “get nothing but shit” for “being soft.” Yet the poet sees wisdom in the eldest woman’s ways.

Before rain I notice seagulls.
They walk in flocks,
cautious across lawns; splayed toes,
indecisive beaks. Grandma says
seagulls mean storm.

In California in the summer,
mockingbirds sing all night.
Grandma says they are singing for their nesting wives.
“they don’t leave their families
borrachando.”

She likes the ways of birds,
respects how they show themselves
for toast and a whistle.

She believes in myths and birds.
She trusts only what she builds
with her own hands.

A self-made success, Cervantes literary career has spanned nearly four decades, earning her additional accolades including the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, the Paterson Prize for Poetry, and a Latino Literature Award.

Don’t miss a chance to see an empowering poet with your own eyes. And to warm your ears with birdsongs from a California summer.

Two weeks ago, Washington Post fiction editor Ron Charles braved the weather for a charming and insightful chat about the world of literary criticism, getting this semester’s Conversations@ Efroymson Series off on the right snowshoe.

For those who missed it, here’s our new friend Ron explaining why the novel will never die, in spite of the perpetual evolution of technology.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/TZLMELHqQb4[/youtube]

When it was time for some Q and A, the lit critic (and former finalist for Hatchet Job of the Year) disputed a peer’s assertion that negative reviews have no place in the industry.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/qbSbvKD8lgQ[/youtube]

I suppose you get a pass for missing this one, but don’t skip the next Conversations@ event: a reading from alums Matt Yeager and Mike Meginnis, two successful young writers who owe Butler a debt (hopefully of gratitude, but maybe money–at least they’ve figured out a way to make a living out of stringing words together). See you at the E-Fro at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20.