A couple of days ago, I mentioned that Robin Black was in this month’s One Story (which, as you know, is the greatest magazine being published today, and I say that knowing full-well that I am, as a result, admitting that the little magazine I publish, Inch, is not the greatest magazine being published today, though I am certain we are still in the top seven).  It looks like I wasn’t the only one to take notice– Robin gets a shout-out from Esquire this month for her story.

I hadn’t looked at Esquire in… well, maybe ever… but finding that link also led me to Esquire’s napkin fiction, in which authors send contributions on a napkin.  (Good stuff, but hardly a match for Michael McFee’s The Napkin Manuscripts.)  That, in turn, to this beautiful piece on last lines by another writer whose name crops up in this space every so often: Sarah Manguso.  Read.  Perhaps you will be left breathless.

Here’s a milestone passed:  On Monday night, I mailed in my final packet for my MFA program.  I’m not done yet, oh no, but the deadlines I still have in front of me will start falling like dominoes: evaluation next week, thesis the following week, writing a class and doing thesis reviews in June, residency (including class and thesis interviews) in July.  But I’m basically done with reading and writing for school.  Now I’m reading and writing for the rest of my life.  That’s kind of cool.  I have yet to select the first book I will read solely for my own enjoyment.

I spent some of the weekend working on some entries for Lauren Turner’s bestiary– check out some of her collages. She’ll have her wares (whoa, easy there, perv-man, not those wares) for sale Sunday at RebusFest (301 N. Kinsey St. in Raleigh).  Go.  Check out the art.  Here’s a sample:

Matthea Harvey, in her Poetry Foundation interview with Jeannine Hall Gailey, pretty much summed up why I love working on Inch:

When something is tiny, maybe the little arrows of heartbreak penetrate more easily—slip in through a tear duct or a pore.

Harvey has always seemed the poetic equivalent of Matthew Barney– you can see the mechanical and pop-cultural influences roiling beneath the surface but the finished product is an otherwordly beauty that cannot be captured simply in (or on) those terms.

This from a friend today. Sarah Dessen is terrific; if you’re in the area, this is worth going to.

*Sarah Dessen*, author of young adult books, will be the featured presenter at the 2008 Steinfirst Lecture on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Hosted by the School of Information and Library Science, the lecture will take place on Saturday, Apr. 5, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. at the Hanes Art Auditorium. A book signing and reception will follow the lecture. For more information about the event go to http://sils.unc.edu/news/releases/2007/12_steinfirst.htm

Dessen is a popular author of young adult books such as: Just Listen, Dreamland and Someone Like You. Several of her novels are award winning, and Just Listen was on the New York Times Bestseller List for 17 weeks.

Sarah Dessen grew up in Chapel Hill, NC and attended UNC at Chapel Hill, graduating with highest honors in Creative Writing. She is the author of several novels, including Someone Like You and The Truth About Forever. A motion picture based on her first two books, entitled How to Deal, was released in 2003. For more information about the author, go to her Web site at: www.sarahdessen.com

I’m so unfaithful to you, book.  I lay around with you all night, nowhere to go, nothing else which needed doing.  I took you in the bathtub and then dragged you back to bed, barely able to towel myself off before I opened you again.  I could barely keep myself in the moment of each page, so eager to discover everything about you.  I practically had my mouth around your syntax, saying it with you, until finally I reached the last page, and lingered only a moment before putting you down.  You’re still on the pillow but I’m up, walking around: a drink of water, a stretch, a walk around the house, feeding the cats.  I’ll think about you the rest of the night, sleep with the memory of you, but tomorrow, I will open up the next book and begin reading.  We spend a week together, maybe two, and then I move on to the next thing, not in spite of you, dear book, never in spite of you: because reading you brought such pleasure, and later served only to remind me that there are so many books I’ve yet to read.

I troll Metafilter every so often, looking for content for Instructify. Today’s been a neat day, because it seems more people than normal are looking for stories and poems they remember. Take a look.

• What’s the name of this story about a president beheading his ministers? It might have been in Spanish.
• Can you help me find a poem, published in the NY Times Book Review 20 years ago, about a baseball pitcher?
• Looking for a poem I read about a domestic frustration and a housewife snapping after toiling away in quiet desperation.
• Please help me locate a collection of Russian/Eastern Bloc short stories. One concerns a snowman and the other is a reflection on life while falling out of a window to one’s death.

The following bullet points consist of links you should follow and the context for following them.

• A parody of “The Office,” created to make you miss the striking writers even more. My friend Charlie directs, my friend Anthony stars.
• My little magazine gets a mention in the News & Observer’s holiday gift guide.
• I called American Gangster “fair.” Creighton liked it a lot better. Metacritic says 76. (Creighton, notice that Michael Collins got the higher ranking.)
• Pinksy gives some love to Van Jordan’s terrific Quantum Lyrics.
• My 14-year-old brother is now allowing me to stalk him via Twitter.
• I felt the need to end this short list with a lolcat.

Have you seen Reign Over Me? Most of the sniping I heard about this movie revolved around Adam Sandler in a dramatic role, blah blah. What I couldn’t figure out was how anyone could possibly write a script in which a supposedly-competent psychiatrists acts the way Liv Tyler’s character does. Good Lord, Hollywood.

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!

Iron Scav 10 was a rousing success… with only one minor complication. Team What the Junk won by a tight margin against Team Don’t Tase Me Bro, who took home the trophy for most immoral picture. Team FAT took the honors for best pic, which was Marielle in a freezer, an astonishing shot…