Napa Valley Writers Conference: First Report

Yes, well, obviously I was having too good a time to blog from the Napa Valley Writers Conference (hi, Nan!). Make that too good a time and way too busy. I was pretty much on the go from 8:30 a.m. until 10 p.m. But it was work I wanted to do -- a race I wanted to run and a track I wanted to run on. Re-entry to the work-a-day world has been rather wrenching, as if riding the wind-shears on a turbulent flight. I stayed in most of the weekend, hoping to stabilize. Now it's more of a slowing down, cutting back from gallop to lope to amble and today, barely a notch above shuffle. It's jet-lag, really, coming down from the excitement of the conference, the conversation, the stories, the laughter,. Of meeting old writing buddies and friends: Gary Silva, Z Egloff, and new: Angela Pnueman, Angela Watrous, of hanging with a Limester, Jane Alynn, but not for long enough.

Be that as it may, I snagged some terrific reads:
Bearing the Body, novel, by Ehud Havazalet
Mendocino, short stories, by Ann Packer
Hunger, short stories, by Lan Samantha Chang
Home Remedies, short stories, by Angela Pnueman
Fire to Fire, poems, by Mark Doty
Famous Builder, memoir, by Paul Lisicky
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, memoir, by Nick Flynn
Rope Bridge, poems, by Nan Cohen

So if nothing else I can read my fool head off until the next conference. Or residency. Or whathaveyou. Because there better be another one ... soon!