AWP tattoos

On Thursday night Sarah and I decided to push through our jetlag with a cocktail at the hotel bar where we had the pleasure of meeting Robb Todd, who, in addition to being a lovely and interesting person, had an amazing tattoo of an old-fashioned typewriter producing a line of poetry. During the rest of AWP I kept encountering writers with literary tattoos, which has led to a bit of a fetish.

"Duidingswoord van extreem mooie dingen"

Sold out

Dear lovely everyone,

Versal is sold out! so we packed up to get a beer.

Thank you for another awesome trip to the USA.

Love,
The editors

"Anna, I want to wrap myself up in your warm Russian fur."

The best part of yesterday was yesterday.

Thank you to everyone for coming to our panel and our offsite. What amazing events, both of them. See what a little strategic flyering can do? I thought flyers were dead. But no. Though maybe next year we'll just print 1000 of them?

Usually when I organize something I'm too distracted to enjoy the thing I've organized. I'm just type-A that way. But yesterday was an incredible exception. After Journal Porn ended and the crowd mountain became just a crowd, we went to The Diner up the street and I had French Toast for (finally) dinner. I was jetlag-cold so Anna wrapped me up in her Russian fur coat, hmmmm. Then Shayna and I came back to the hotel and I went horizontal and slept like a baby.

Here's a picture of the panel yesterday. From left to right: Jen Woods from The Lumberyard Magazine, Matvei Yankelevich from 6x6, Sandra Doller from 1913 a journal of forms, Jodee Stanley from Ninth Letter, Shayna Schapp from Versal, and Travis Kurowski, our amazing moderator, from Luna Park Review.

As Travis said, "This is like being at a table with Spike Jonze and Sophia Coppola."

Hotel-room pow-wow

Jennifer, Anna and I are sharing a hotel room at AWP. It's HUGE. About the size of a large Amsterdam apartment. So, after a delicious meal in the nearby Lebanese Taverna (crammed with other AWPers), we all gathered in our room tonight for a talk about the future of Versal. It's going to be big and bright, of course. To my knowledge, we have no photo documentation of this meeting, so just imagine nine beautiful people engaged in deep conversation about all the amazing things possible for our lit mag.

Convergence

It's just fucking awesome.

Some of the coolest people on the planet make up the Versal team. You guys rock buckets.

Microblogs from AWP because we don't have time for else

Overheard tonight over the second annual Tuesday night sushi Versal dinner somewhere in Washington D.C.: "Enter my bubble if you want to be sex free." Note this overhearing comes from and is by Versal editors.

We're here. Most of us, anyway. Here's a shot of Matt, Anna, and Robert tonight at an Irish pub.

Shayna and I endured a fairly bumpy ride between Ireland and Iceland (r/c). Go figure. Here's a dumb one of us between seatbelt constraints.


Does anyone else notice the incredibly high percentage of couches to floor space at the Marriott Wardman?