With a week of relative inactivity on this blog, it seems like a good time to use the patented Scott Jennings Bullet-Point Update. (A link is provided in every bullet point because Jennings once fussed at me for linking too damn much.)

• I’ve got three poems up at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature– I have been remiss in not mentioning this earlier, not because my work is superlative, but because poetry editor Helen Losse has worked really hard to find a series of representative Southern voices that’s broad and varied. Jilly Dybka and Jessie Carty are also in this issue, as is Evie Shockley, whose book a half-red sea I just picked up.
• Ladybug and I spent a couple days in Denver for Thanksgiving. On the return flight, I became enthralled by Daniel Wallace’s new novel, Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician. I’m a sucker for novels about magic. I’m a sucker for Daniel Wallace novels. You can see how I might have had trouble putting this book down.
• Looks like UNC’s turn at Festival of the Book is not going to happen. That’s a let-down.
• Worksheets are here for the winter residency at Warren Wilson. I like the anticipation before the residency– reading the faculty introductory statements, making charts and graphs of how much I would pay (over and above the cost of tuition) to work with each faculty member were bribes acceptable, volunteering to be a buddy for a new student, devouring the assigned bookshop reading and then procrastinating on the annotation.
• I’ve crossed over to the dark side for the bookshop this residency– my first choice was Hemingway’s In Our Time. My right side feels all tingly with guilt, since I’m entering my last semester in the program and this is no way to get focused on the task at hand. My left side feels all tingly with glee, hopeful that I’ll get to hear the fictionistas dissect my favorite Hemingway story (or this PDF’ed one, or this one, or”The Battler,” which I can’t easily find online). I’m not planning to devote any significant portion of my life to fiction but this should be a three-day crash course in awesome short fiction, should I ever make new plans.
• I bought a book by Jenny Factor because I liked the author’s name and the cover. I recently reactivated my City of Heroes account to play around for a couple weeks before I go back to school, so the super-hero-ness of the name struck me. As it turns out , the few poems I’ve read so far are quite good. Score!