As it’s spring break, C. and I are up in Door County. It’s snowing. I should be working on the novel. Instead I’m eating sweet potatoes and thinking about Mad Men.

It looks like sometime in the night a deer nosed its way up to the back glass of this cabin. There are lots of apples under the snow for it to eat; I wonder if it found any.

My review of Paige Ackerson-Kiely’s My Love Is A Dead Arctic Explorer is up at Devil’s Lake. Short version: it’s a terrific book, go read it. And I have new work forthcoming from Iron Horse Literary Review and Salt Hill — thanks so much to those editors!

We’re in the home stretch of this academic year: less than two months. And then the giant spaceship that is prelims will come down and announce its absolute takeover of my summer.

I’m gearing up for AWP. This might take some doing, as my history with this conference has been problematic. Or rather, with getting there. In the past few years, I have been variously stranded in five states after encounters with (a) freak snowstorms and (b) giant raccoons who crawl up into our car’s radiator to die, and yet I look forward to it every year because, of course, AWP has the trifecta: amazing bookfair + amazing readings + all my writer friends ever. Having said that, if my flight this year gets redirected to Khartoum, I won’t be particularly surprised.

If, however, the syzygy necessary to get me to Boston actually occurs, I’ll be reading for Ink Node on the night of Thursday, March 7th. I have a major crush on Ink Node; it’s one of the ways I’ve discovered a lot of my poet crushes (and then bought their books and then crushed harder). They’re put together an amazing lineup, and I’m honored to be invited. If you’re interested, you can read my poem “Liebestod” from the most recent Tin House at Ink Node here.

I’ll also be participating in a panel on Women Poets on Mentoring, talking about my experiences working with the incomparable Rebecca Dunham with Allison Joseph, Shara McCallum, and my dear friend Tyler Mills. You can find us on that same Thursday, at 4:30, in room 108 on the plaza level of the hotel. Here’s a description:

R251. Women Poets on Mentoring. (Allison Joseph, Rebecca Dunham, Brittany Cavallaro, Shara McCallum, Tyler Mills) Women poets today have a wealth of literary models to turn to in their reading. Cultivating relationships with other female poets during key stages in their development is, however, equally important. Female mentors can fill a crucial role in helping other women reflect on writing, pedagogy, professional development, and even lifestyle choices. Panel members will reflect on their own mentor-mentee relationships as well as discuss how individuals and writing programs might foster such connections.

Hope to see you there!

Good things, late January 2013 edition: box pleats; Tazo cucumber white tea; having taken the horrible hour to clean out the vacuum (therefore, no longer needing to have done); Dustin O’Halloran’s Piano Solos Vol 2.; hand-proofing the novel manuscript; Madison dinner with all my girls-with-bangs; this paleo diet, which is so great it’s threatening to make me an evangelist; Gustav Davidson’s A Dictionary of Angels, and rereading Timothy Donnelly’s The Cloud Corporation; all the books that keep arriving to the house, for pleasure and for prelims and for coursework, and my getting to read those too.

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Excited to have work forthcoming in Barrow Street and Poetry Northwest – thanks so much to those editors. Excited, too, to be Poem-A-Daying in February again, because I think I’m finally seeing the whole shape of this second manuscript.