The annual convention of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs is this weekend (Thu-Sat) in New York, and thousands of writers, wanna-be writers, literary magazines, and MFA programs are descending on the city.

Wednesday night, I attended an unaffiliated reading sponsored by Open City. The highlight of that reading was Jeff Johnson, who reminded me of George Saunders, except that I didn't hate him. I mention that in the post because the reading was PACKED, probably at least partly as a result of the convention.

This morning, I attended two panel discussions that were highly academic and dull--as dry as dirt, despite topics that sounded (to me, at the time) promising. I won't even bother to go into detail about them, except to say that in the second one, the readers didn't even bother to stand at the podium to read their boring essays, and, in fact, at least two of them read whilst propping their faces up with their free arm, as if they were boring even to themselves. One guy also read from a laptop. If you ever thought that might be a cool idea, think again.

In the afternoon, I went to a reading featuring Lydia Davis, Facine Prose, Jennifer Egan, and Percival Everett. I'd heard of all of them, but Davis was the only one whose books I've read (I like her writing very much, even though her most recent one was a disappointment). I liked Egan the most, and I will probably read her book sometime in the near future.

Instead of waiting around to see Joyce Carol Oates read, I went home and took a nap because I was getting a headache.

In the evening, I went to an FC2 reading, and I had a nice chat with some of their interns about the differences between Tallahassee and Tuscaloosa. Yuriy Tarnowsky and Diane Williams were the standouts, but all of the readers (none were familiar to me before) were pretty good.

Certainly more interesting than any of the panel discussions--and perhaps more interesting than some of the readings--was the book fair portion of the conference. Three huge rooms full of tables, with hundreds of literary magazines, publishing houses and MFA programs represented. It was rather overwhelming, but I managed to make contact with all the various contingencies from my homestate, including the University of Alabama Press; two lit mags from my alma mater the University of Alabama-Birmingham (one, called PMS- PoemMemoirStory is the direct descendent of Astarte, the first magazine that ever published one of my stories); and Black Warrior Review (btw, I didn't win their fiction contest, but I did get an honorable mention in the new issue). The Alabama Writer's Forum was giving away little packets of peanuts. I said to the rep, "I hope those peanuts are from Dothan." They were.