24th Annual Rutgers-Camden Summer Writers' Conference

The exceedingly smart novelist-poet-critic-teacher Lisa Zeidner has invited me to join an exquisite cast of writers for the 24th Annual Rutgers-Camden Summer Writers' Conference. Running from June 21 through June 30th of this year and designed to be taken for either undergraduate or graduate credit (or a non-credit certificate), it features the writers Jewell Parker Rhodes, Brenda Shaughnessey, Daniel Bergner, Lisa Tracy, Stephen Dunn, Jonathan Dee, David Shields, Max Apple, Paul Lisicky, Mark Doty, Mat Johnson, Patrick Rosal, and Lisa herself, as well as yours truly.

I'll be there on June 25th, teaching creative nonfiction and doing a reading with the much-beloved Max Apple of the University of Pennsylvania.

I hope you'll join us. To register, or for more information, see the web site.

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Camera Ready, Travel Prepared

I have a new camera—something sweet, small, and hot pink. Portable, plane-able, willing to travel with me. It's a Sony, because I'm loyal to Sony, and it's all charged, plugged in, and awaiting: Barnes and Noble Educator's Day, Fox Cities Book Festival, Philadelphia Book Festival, Children's Book World (thank you, Libby Mosier), Book Expo (unveiling Dangerous Neighbors!), Book Bloggers Convention (meeting so many of you), Rutgers-Camden Summer Writers' Conference (I'm teaching fiction), the ALA in Washington, DC.

I travel light. I bring my stories. I've got a camera to help me hold onto it all.

I'm not a shopper. I'm always here at my desk. Today was an adventure.

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