The Literati Descend on Seattle: Over 10,000 Book Folk in Town for AWP

image James Yamasaki, via The Stranger  It stands for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) and their 2014 conference begins this week in the Emerald City. Though it sounds a bit academic and something you get credit for it is actually the largest  literary gathering on the continent and best thing to happen around here since the Seahawk parade. Thousands of writers, poets, publishers, editors, and related book folk are here for the conference. Plenty of headline acts, Annie Proulx, Sherman Alexie, Robert Haas, Gary Snyder, Sharon Olds and there are also 650 vendors at the bookfair! I'll...

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Raymond Carver by the Drink

It's hard to believe it has been 38 years since the publication of Raymond Carver's monumental first short story collection, Will You Please Be Quiet Please? To celebrate the  anniversary the folks at Black Balloon Publishing  have come up with a clever idea; to track the drinks within Raymond Carver's stories. Here's how they did it: Each mention of drink in each story got a tally. If it said three drinks were poured, they made three tally marks. If another round was had, They marked a drink for each character. If people were drinking and someone came in drunk with an empty...

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Really Waiting for Godot

Another day at Beckett International Airport… Waiting for Godot Feb 2014 © Dan Piraro at Bizzaro Comics and if you're still waiting for a copy of the First Edition this might help: First English Language Edition of Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett New York: Grove Press, 1954. $3750. First published in French in 1952; this is the First Edition of Beckett’s own English translation, preceding the British edition by about two years. and if you still need more, here are a few other Beckett items   

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