The summer (school-summer, not season-summer) is rapidly drawing to a close, and with it I’ve had a barrage of good writing news.

First, I’ll be going to the Virginia Quarterly Review Writers’ Conference as a Fiction Scholar.  I’m thrilled to be heading to Charlottesville next month to spend a few days with writers like Richard Bausch, Tom Franklin, Beth Ann Fennelly, and Wells Tower (all of whom I admire greatly).  As an added bonus, I’ll get to see my old MFA buddy Charles Heiner, who I haven’t seen since Ann and I got married.

I also just learned that my brief nonfiction essay “You’re the tower and I Rapunzel, she says” will appear in a future issue of Brevity, one of my absolute favorite journals for creative non-fiction.

The good word about When You’re Down By the River (quick plug: go order a copy if you haven’t already) is getting out, with two wonderful reviews from Todd Gray and Brittany Moore.  Many thanks to both of them for reading the chapbook and singing its praises.