I've Returned from Russia

There are many things to mention that I've neglected: Piotr Siwecki translated a few things I wrote at Minimal Books. Thanks Piotr. It's an honor. He's also translated friends Molly Gaudry, Matt Bell, Kathy Fish, Robert Lopez, and Kim Chinquee.

A few folks included Prose in their best of 2009 lists. Many thanks to (and I am humbled by) John Madera, Adam Robinson, and Matt Debenedictis.

A short thing from a new book I'm trying to finish was posted at Abjective. Thanks to Darby Larson.

I'm reading in Decatur, GA on January 19th, a Tuesday. It's for the Georgia Center for the Book. It'll be at the Decatur Public Library at 7:15 PM.

On January 16th Ben Spivey and Amish Trivedi read for Solar Anus at 7:30 PM at the BEEP BEEP. I'm excited about that reading, and excited about getting back to readings, and back to work, everything, all very much now that I've had a nice break.

Russia was rad. My wife lived in Russia for four years before meeting me, and she's fluent and has friends who are practically family, so I had what she called a "very Russian trip to Russia." We were staying with friends for a good portion of the time. The friends we stayed with were supposed to join us for tours in St. Petersburg, but Natasha got appendicitis right before we arrived and so couldn't join us. The plan initially was for me to tag along behind all the other Russians and my wife would translate for me what was being said. We'd already paid for these tours and so were kind of roped into sticking with them. I had to sign a form saying that I promised my wife's translations would not interfere with any Russian tourist's enjoyment of said tour. I learned the Cyrillic alphabet and by extension many Russian words, all nouns, a few phrases (most notably, "Sorry, I don't speak Russian," "I'm waiting for my wife," and "May I have another beer?"). I bought a few books that look sure to be interesting, in Russian, by contemporary Russian writers who seem to be on the literary edge over there. My vieja and I are beginning translations. More about all that as it develops. Bye bye.