Bits and Pieces
March 8, 2014 § Leave a comment
1. AWP was a no-go for me this year, doubly unfortunate because I love everything about Seattle, but I’ve enjoyed reading everyone’s morning-after posts. Cf. Samuel Snoek-Brown, Mira Gonzalez at Hobart, Aaron Gilbreath at Salon, and Book Fight! My hope is to make it to Conversations & Connections in Philadelphia this fall.
2. R.I.P. Sherwin B. Nuland. Author and physician best known for the book How We Die, credited for ushering in new and sensitive thinking in the consideration of end-of-life care. Dr. Nuland was more familiar to me as the author of The Wisdom of the Body (retitled for the paperback edition as How We Live), an exquisitely written primer on human physiology and its gross and gorgeous mechanisms.
3. Nick Ripatrazone continues to kick ass over at The Millions. His wistful article on postal submissions struck a chord with me. I began submitting my stories in 2007, when only a handful of journals had begun using Submittable (then Submishmash), and I have fond memories of setting aside time on Saturday mornings to make trips to the post office with a stack of clasp envelopes addressed neatly in black Sharpie. The whole process made the act of submitting feel like an important piece of business.
4. At Electric Literature, Michael J. Seidlinger (The Laughter of Strangers) has done the literary community an enormous service with his compilation of indie and small press titles due out in 2014.
5. My only fear in signing up for that Amtrak writer residency would be rejection of my work by the Secretary of Transportation, who I’m told is turned off by “loner protagonists” and “endings for the sake of endings.”
Neil Serven 
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