Time is this mystery: right now it’s 10:47pm, but hopefully (I’ve never tried this before) by the time this comic appears online it will be tomorrow. Except, of course, for anyone reading this, it already is. (Unless it isn’t.)

I’m trying to set up my post early, because tomorrow morning I’m getting on a flight bound for Boston and AWP! (Again, hopefully. Please no winter storm.) If you don’t know what AWP is, please refer here,  here, and/or here. (Perhaps even here?) If, after reading those, you still don’t know, well, it probably doesn’t matter for you.

This week, the VIDA Count put out their (our) 2012 numbers. (Briefly: The VIDA Count looks at a set of major literary publications each year and counts how many pieces in those journals – reviews, authors reviewed, and bylined pieces, depending on the publication – were written by women vs. men. It’s telling.) I have mixed feelings about this, because:

1. The numbers are pretty dismal, but
2. I served on the Count team, so I’m quite proud that the numbers are done, they’re out, they’re in the world.

Based on the press I’ve seen so far, it seems like everyone is more or less exhausted by the feelings the Count elicits year after year. But what I will say is this: it is important for human beings to reflect on the state of the world they have made, and compare it to the world they imagine, the world they want. The Count provides information that helps us do that necessary work as thinking animals. To that end, it is always to the good, and I am very, very happy to have contributed my time and effort. I worked with some wonderful people, and we did good work.

Finally, two nice things:

1. I have a piece in the current issue of YEW Journal – an “imaginary poet” piece, structurally based on the writing in Alan Michael Parker’s book Imaginary Poets.
I’m delighted to be included!
2. My translation of an excerpt from Evgeny Grishkovets’s book Rivers (written originally in Russian) is in this issue of Cerise Press. Disambiguation: Evgeny Grishkovets is 100% real.

If you’re interested, please take a look at those pieces, and the other great work alongside them in YEW and Cerise Press.

And for everyone going to AWP: SEE YOU SOON.