What can I say? I took one little holiday excursion to Kentucky and got all relaxed. When I came back, real life was waiting for me in some of its more irritating costumes. It’s been hard to get back here.

I meant to do a Short Story post on Monday; I actually did read a book of short stories over the weekend, Danit Brown’s Ask For a Convertible. I was reading it because Brown is going to be teaching at the IUWC this summer. I was just sort of going to browse it, and do my duty, and take it back to the library. But I ended up reading the whole thing. Mostly because it was funny right away. I like funny. I kept reading because the grandmother was crazy, because Osnat was whiny and liked to make out with Sanjay in the C corridor, because she had to get advice on how to tuck her jeans into her slouchy socks just so. (I remember this; I used to wear two pairs of socks just so I could have the maximum coordination with my two-color eyeshadow and humongous dangling earrings.) I did get tired of Osnat’s whining and indecisiveness by the time she was grown up and I was 3/4 of the way through the book, but by then I wasn’t allowed to quit (tyranny of personal reading rules.)

They’ve put up some performances from last year’s IUWC on the main page. I’m including here a clip of Ross Gay reading. I had maybe the teensiet little writer-crush on him. He’s all young and charming and doing his good-looking best to completely rehabilitate the modern poet’s loathsome image. Watch him read ‘Bringing the Shovel Down’ (at about 9:50) and tell me your heart’s not in your throat.

Follow that with a chaser of Donald Antrim, reading from his (unpublished) novel, and you will snort milk out your nose laughing. Even if you’re not drinking milk. I swear.