happiness is...

...a $6 bookshelf (from Goodwill) filled with all my favorite books. See!

it was meant for me!

It's not really organized alphabetically. I decided to organize it by subject and genre. So there's the YA and other non-literary fiction section:

some of my faves

 

I do have other YA books, but some of them live in my sister's bookshelf. On the second shelf: my beautiful (small) collection of Shakespeare; my study-abroad collection, which includes Roddy Doyle, Robert McLiam Wilson, and my Irish poetry books; and some Steinbeck. All of which I read for school this year.

all RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) editions!

I love Irish poetry. Love.

also growing to love Steinbeck. Especially East of Eden

 

 

Bottom shelf: some classics from high school. The good (Too Kill a Mockingbird), the bad (Faulkner - but only in my opinion), and the ugly (Lord of the Flies - although it still makes my favorites list). And my random non-fiction collection:

Bird by Bird, anyone?

proof that I have a BA in English

The only problem with this bookshelf is that it's full. But if worst comes to worst, I can toss Faulkner and Camus, maybe even Kafka and Tolstoy, and free up some room for the new stuff. Or take another trip to Goodwill...

 

 

i'm published!

My short story "Road Trip, 1977," which I wrote in a fiction workshop at school this semester, is live today at YARN! It's a reflection on memory, on aging, and on growing up. And it wouldn't be as polished and pretty as it is now without my creative writing class and professor, and the editorial genius of YARN's editor Kerri. Thanks to each of you!

YARN (or Young Adult Review Network) is an exciting new(ish) journal for all things YA: fiction, poetry, interviews, essays. It also just won the "Innovations in Reading Prize" from the National Book Award Foundation! I'm so happy to see my story there.

So. Run on over to www.yareview.net. Or straight to http://yareview.net/2011/05/road-trip-1977/ for "Road Trip, 1977." When you're done, check out the excerpt from Allen Zadoff's new novel, or the inspiring Kody Keplinger's story "Before We Were Lost." Actually, I owe this whole thing to Kody, because I heard about YARN through the link on her blog. Thanks, Kody :)

announcing

Three things:

1. My graduation from college with a B.A. in English
2. My new internship as a reader for an awesome literary agency!
3. My job search

And some notes on those three things...

1. I'm still in shock about the whole college-is-over thing. What? 
2. But...I'm super excited about my internship: an opportunity to gain an insider-perspective on the publishing industry, and hone my editing/critiquing skills.
3. Finally, if you happen to have any connections to any technical- or copy-writing relating jobs, I'm your girl. On that note, if you have any connections to any job, I'm also your girl.

Happy summer!

old manuscripts: dump 'em, keep 'em?

I'm doing a massive deep-clean of my room today, and I keep finding scraps and pieces of old manuscripts lying around in drawers, closets, folders. They're everywhere: ideas scrawled in notebooks, character and plot notes on loose-leaf paper, whole drafts of edited manuscripts in stacks or three-ring binders.

And I have NO IDEA what to do with them. Part of me wants to be nostalgic and keep them, because maybe someday I'll have fun reading through the old stuff, the unpublished stuff, the really bad stuff that no one else ever saw.

But the other part of me wants to chuck it all in the recycle bin -- because honestly, if I kept every print-out or notecard of every draft I ever wrote, I wouldn't have room for a bed in my room.

What do you do with old manuscript copies and writing notes? Should I be nostalgic or realistic? Help!!

happy moments

For the first time, I got to hold the final copy of a book I've watched grow from rough draft to ARC to hardcover novel (with a blurb from Sarah Dessen on the front page!). And it was so, so exciting to rip open the Amazon box today and lift out a finished, published, glossy book. Wow!

Jessi's debut is beautifully written, the perfect beach read for this coming summer. Anna, the main character, and Crystal Cove State Park, the setting, are vividly narrated - the prose makes you feel beachy and sunburnt and sandy all at once. And the best thing: it's waiting for you at Barnes and Noble!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

cliche college moments

I was thinking last night about my most embarrassing moments in college, and for some reason I couldn't think of too many. I could think of plenty of embarrassing moments that happened to other people, like the time my friend's long hair got caught in an upperclassman guy's backpack and they had to mutually untangle it, or the time another friend realized she had a huge hole in the seat of her pants...

But my embarrassing moments weren't too bad. Just forgetting to spray nonstick stuff on the waffle maker in the cafeteria and having to scrape my waffle off the grid in front of a line of impatient people. Or throwing a donut on a dare at a late-night finals breakfast and unintentionally beaning someone in the back of the head.

But. Today. Ironically, the day after I decided I couldn't think of a super embarrassing moment at college. It happened.

I had an 8:00 a.m. physics final. Stayed up kinda late studying. Set my alarm for 7:00 so I could get ready, eat breakfast, get coffee. My roomie had an 8:00 a.m. too, so she set her own alarm. And I woke up to my phone ringing, and knew right away (you know when you get that feeling?) that something was really, really wrong.

Friend: Where are you??

Basically, neither my alarm nor my roommate's alarm went off. We had this moment of total panic at 8:01, leaping out of bed and throwing on some clothes, and then we ran out the door. Ran.

The physics final was in full swing when I got down to the classroom, and the room was dead silent. It was so horrible - half because I'd so obviously just jumped out of bed, but mostly because it's all so terribly cliche. 8:00 a.m. final. Physics class. Faulty alarm. Maybe I hadn't filled up my quota of sufficiently college-y moments and needed, in my last week before graduation, to make up for being on time and responsible for three years (ha). Maybe I needed a new embarrassing story.

Or maybe I just need to buy a new alarm.