I have a lot to say about AWP: about how beautiful and colorful Los Angeles was, about how nice it was to catch up with old friends, and how much I got out of the conference.  But something happened as I was heading to LAX (and back to my comfortable academic job in Pittsburgh) that I can’t stop thinking about.  So I figured I’d share it first.

10:38AM in Los Angeles: [I dial 911 and explain the situation to the dispatcher, who then transfers me to the paramedics.]

Paramedic dispatcher: What’s your emergency and location?

Me: I’m at Ninth and Figueroa.  There’s a man lying facedown on the sidewalk.  [The man appeared to be in his late 30s.  He was dark-skinned, maybe of Southeastern Asian descent.  He had shoulder-length black curly hair and was wearing clean cargo pants, a clean t-shirt, and a pair of clean sneakers. Inexplicably, and maybe congruous to his situation, a pair of new-looking brown New Balance sneakers were scattered on the sidewalk  a few feet from his head.]

Dispatcher: Is he in front of a specific building? Any specific landmarks?

Me: I’m at Ninth and Figueroa.  He’s the guy lying facedown on the sidewalk.

Dispatcher: There are lots of people facedown on the sidewalk there.

Me: Um…not today.

Dispatcher: Did you talk to him?

Me: I asked if he was okay. He looked up at me and mumbled something.  I didn’t really understand him.  [Notably, he was lying on the sidewalk’s main thoroughfare, not the edges and corners where the city’s homeless sleep. We all had to step around him.]

Dispatcher: Is there any blood? Any visible sign of trauma or injury?

Me: I didn’t see any.  He didn’t look very well.  He seemed disoriented and out of it.  When I was talking to him, he didn’t seem to register it.

Dispatcher: Well, what do exactly you want us to do here?

Me: I don’t know.  The man’s clearly not okay.  He’s lying facedown on the sidewalk and unresponsive.

Dispatcher: You said he talked to you.

Me: He just mumbled something.  He didn’t seem very interested in talking to me.

Dispatcher: What exactly do you want us to do here?

Me: I don’t know.  I guess I just figured I’d let you know.  If you don’t want to help, I don’t know what to tell you.

Dispatcher: Thank you for your call.

[The end.]

I’m thrilled to be a panelist at this symposium, held on Pitt’s campus through the Public and Professional Writing Program.  I know Sarah Leavens, who organized the whole thing, and many of the panelists–I know it’s going to be fun, informative, and useful.  Hope you can join us!

Details:

“Are you Facebook Frustrated? Twitter­-tangled? Stymied by Snapchat? Do you wonder about the professional uses of social media? You’re not alone! The ability to connect with anyone from anywhere, digitally, and the near­ necessary need to present a digital version of yourself in multiple iterations has changed how we socialize, how we write, and how we define professionalism. Pitt students studying this rapidly-­evolving field will present on the most popular platforms and answer your questions about best professional uses, followed by a Q&A from a panel of social media professionals, including two Pitt PPW grads, a social media strategist from ModCloth, and a professional author.”

More info about the event and the panelists.

Littsburgh has some great coverage (including an interview) of this sad news.  Thanks to Rachel Ekstrom for reaching out to Sherrie Flick, Kris Collins, and me for our thoughts.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, here are three things I’ve recently fallen in love with:

1. Kentucky Route Zero.  It’s a point-and-click game–it brought back memories of Maniac Mansion, the first videogame I ever played, joystick and all.  However, MM‘s control scheme was frustrating and felt outdated even on a Commodore 64; Kentucky Route Zero‘s developers managed to preserve the best parts of the genre without the drawbacks: the result is a game with beautiful and stylish graphics; a gorgeous, immersive soundtrack; and a unique mixture of Americana and dread.

I just finished Act I, but here are a few screenshots that really don’t do it justice:

Also, if it matters, I’m not alone in my love for this game, which is also a unique mixture of weird-but-accessible.  I’m bad with directions and hate feeling lost in the world of the game, so most 8-bit adventure games are off the table.  I gave up on Year Walk, and even the beautiful worlds in Fez eventually became too tiresome after I couldn’t figure out the world map.  But somehow, I felt lost and disoriented in KR0 without ever becoming frustrated.  Can’t wait to start Act II.

2. This band and this song.

3. I avoided reading Station Eleven for a long time. I don’t know–I love postapocalyptic stuff, but after a while, I noticed a certain sameness creeping in.  Even beyond tiresome character tropes and scenarios, sometimes it felt like writers were using the genre to lazily spew an uninteresting brand of nihilism.

Anyway, at a point when everyone was talking about this book and I was flush with cash, I bought a ticket to hear Emily St. John Mandel give a talk in Pittsburgh.  (Also, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to read more contemporary books.)

I was really impressed with Station Eleven: the author was clearly aware of the genre’s conventions and made some smart decisions to make the subject matter feel new and fresh.  Also, many of the ideas in the book are genuinely thought-provoking.  I can’t wait to hear what she has to say on Monday.

I’m very excited to be co-leading this session on dialogue with my good friend Marc Nieson.   I’m still in the late planning stages, but I think I’ll include some examples by Emily St. John Mandel and Amelia Gray.  If you’re in Pittsburgh, I hope you can stop on by.

Special thanks to Ellen McGrath Smith and Erika Fleegle for this lovely review of Eighty Days in The Fifth Floor.  This is a wonderful issue, featuring an interview with Sharon Flake and a feature on one of my most trusted writing mentors, Geeta Kothari.  And, as a bonus, the interview is by Rachel Sansonetti, one of my most talented students.

If you teach for long enough, you get to see your students interviewing teachers you had in college.  It’s a strange-yet-satisfying feeling, like watching a circuit complete itself.

Special thanks to Laura Clark Rohrer (for writing and editing the article) and to Robyn Coggins (for passing along my novel to Laura).

EDOS looks gorgeous in the “bookshelf” section of Pitt’s official alumni magazine, which reaches over 260,000 readers nationally.  If that’s not enough reason to pick up a copy, this issue is packed with literary stuff, including an interview with my former grad school classmates Katie Coyle and Rachel Mangini.  It also features writing by Pitt alums Micaela Corn, Libby Ferda, Matt Cichowicz, and Breanna Durham.

The description in detail:

When I walked out of the theater after seeing Episode I: The Phantom Menace, I finally understood that the universe was a cruel, indifferent wasteland and that existence was largely meaningless.  I knew that my heroes would go to dramatic lengths to disappoint me, and that any high points in life were merely buildups to some great cosmic letdown.  There was the sneaking suspicion that things I loved hadn’t been that great to begin with–I’d just blinded myself to their flaws.

Not to be dramatic, but as I walked across the parking lot, blinking in the harsh sunlight, I understood that my life from that point on was going to be a slow, steady march to the grave.  My childhood officially ended when I saw The Phantom Menace.  I was 22.

And now, Disney and J.J. Abrams want me to risk that experience again.  “It’s a different approach,” they say.  “We’re using practical effects instead of CGI,” they say.  I mean, I want to trust them.  They’re saying all the right things.  But I can’t help but think of Lucy with the football.  “No thanks,” is what I want to say.  Except…who am I kidding?  I know I’ll watch the movie, in the theater, when the lines die down and I’m ready.  Aside from the sneaking suspicion that this movie will be another gigantic disappointment, I’m worried that some bozo online is going to ruin it for me.  My original plan was to take a break from all social media until I got around to seeing The Force Awakens, but then I found this.

There’s a Chrome extension called Unspoiler that you can tailor to different shows and films (might I recommend The Wire, Seven, and Battlestar Galactica if you haven’t seen them).  I plugged in “Star Wars” to the program and it got to work, albeit a bit zealously:

And, as long as you’re viewing them through Chrome, it also works with social media:

 

I’m pretty sure that few of these red bars are actually covering spoilers.  I was pretty sure Brandon hadn’t seen the movie yet (since it isn’t out yet?), so I clicked on “Show spoiler”:

So, even though Unspoiler seems to be taking the “pray and spray” route, it’s still getting the job done.  And I’m okay with missing out on a few tweets and clickbait headlines until I actually get around to seeing the movie.

I’ll check in either way, but if I hate TFA, you won’t hear me caterwauling about it.  After being fooled by all three prequels, if I end up on my back, dizzy, the football unkicked, I’ll have no one to blame but myself.

What do Joy Castro, Thomas Williams, Bill Cheng, Kaitlyn Greendidge, Shanthi Sekaran, Sun Yung Shin, Yvette Benavides, Garrett Hongo, May-Lee Chai, Selena Anderson, Lee Herrick, Sil Sohn, Bich Minh Nguyen, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Tomas Morin, and Aimee Phan have in common?

They all have important stuff to say about diversity and the creative writing workshop, and I’m lucky to join them.  Special thanks once again to Matthew Salesses, who invited me to join this important conversation.

Very happy to be representing Oakland!  My essay “Time Capsule, 2005” gets a brief mention in The Pittsburgh Anthology review by Carol O’Sullivan in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.