Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

The website of WILLA, Women in Letters and Literary Arts, has gone live just days before the AWP, which is germane because it was the rejection of her proposed AWP panel on women writers that led Cate Marvin to write the email that got the WILLA ball rolling last fall.  WILLA seeks to address a lot of issues, but particularly those surrounding how women's writing is received, reviewed, reported, and respected.  (You know, the kind of thing I gripe about from time to time when I skim the TOCs of the big magazines or report on the fellatastic fantasies of important journal editors.) 

According to our mission statement, the folks in WILLA are "spread across the country, represent different identities, work from within a range of aesthetics, and share the common goal to create a forum at which all women writers may engage in much longed for conversations about literature being produced by women and its reception by the larger culture."  You can get involved on Facebook or Twitter, and you can send your email to be notified as soon as membership becomes available.  If you're heading to AWP, WILLA has kindly provided a list of events that might interest you.

In other news, the contractors are coming!  The contractors are coming!  Below please see the corner of our apartment that has been serving as my office since we moved to the new place on January 16th:

(Note the experimental and rather unsuccessful color swatches, the closed blinds obscuring the view of the multilevel parking garage, the very high-tech Internet connection coiled along the wall, and the raw cement floors--which I try to see as Industrial Chic, but they do wear on a girl.)

I'm quite used to writing in a corner of the living room; it's how I've been working since we got to Lincoln, and back in Crawfordsville, Indiana, I did most of my writing at the kitchen table or, in warm weather, on the front porch.  In grad school, I drafted some of my best work after hours in the empty corridors of the Blocker building.

But no more.  No more!  At 42, I am about to get a room of my own, and I'm so excited.  It should be done, according to the contractors' schedule, by April 22--which is also by coincidence not only Earth Day but also James's and my 15th wedding anniversary.  (I read yesterday that people tend to overestimate how much they'll be made happier by additional wealth, and that simpler things actually make them happier:  sex, socializing after work, and having dinner with friends.  Meeting just once a month with friends has the happiness-effect of doubling your income, according to one study, and being well married offers the happiness equivalent of an extra $100,000 a year--which I guess makes James my Million and a Half Dollar Man.)

While marital bliss may make one wealthy in happiness, every mujer can still profit from a room with a door she can close.

The duct tape marks where the walls will go:

That's the computer on which I'm typing at this very moment, and on the lowest shelf of the bookcase are some of those notebooks I blather on about incessantly.  As soon as I post this blog, I'm going to unplug the computer and drag everything out of the way, so the contractors can do their mighty thing.

You might also notice a small orange fellow in the shot.  Shhhh--he believes he's functioning much like a hottie draped across a car hood, adding allure and value by his mere languid presence.

Faye asked kindly about him some time ago, so here is Spyder Von Zeppelin (Grey named him) in all his marmalade glory, earlier this winter:


We were on the way to see the first Pirates of the Caribbean (oh, the lengths to which parents will go), which subtly dates Spyder, and we thought the little kitten's odds did not look good.  So we scrapped our movie plans and got a box from the Kroger.  Grey lured him out from under the car, and we took him home--just for the night, of course, since the Humane Society was already closed. 

And that was that.  He's been with us through two sequels and shows no signs of leaving.

Even though that last line has the satisfying purse-clasp-snap of closure, I'm going to break all the rules of good blogging and go on here for a bit, since AWP and some ungodly committee meetings will leave me little time to write to you this week, and I don't expect to be back except maybe with tiny bulletins from my iPhone.  Here's some random stuff I want to tell you:

Agents?  Book deals?  Carmen Gimenez Smith keeps it real.  (Scroll down to #2.)  Thanks, John Chávez, for turning me on to her work.

My Women's and Gender Studies colleague Margaret Jacobs won the biggest book prize you can win if you're a historian, the Bancroft Prize.  Her study analyzes the policy of child-removal in Australia and the American West, the trauma it caused to indigenous families, and the role white women played in the whole dynamic.  Very important and complicated stuff.  Congratulations, Margaret!

I am very excited about an offer that has been made for my book of essays, ISLAND OF BONES, but the ink's not dry, and I don't want to jinx anything, so I'll say no more for the present.   However, I'll be reading the title essay at AWP, so if you want a sneak preview, come by on Thursday to the panel chaired by Lorraine López.

I'm also super-excited that, after a year spent at Boys Town, my "little sister" Amara gets to come home to Lincoln at the end of May.  She's done great:  she has straight As and can now run two miles, and she has the most amazing, upbeat attitude about the world.  I get to see her this evening.  She's about to turn 16!

Lastly, let me just say I hope that Sonam, Roland, and Rhonda had a wonderful time at the ACLA conference in New Orleans, which sounded fascinating, and I wish them safe travels home.

And everyone who's heading for Denver this week:  Safe travels to you, and I hope we see each other!