Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School...

...has some rock-solid rules for their monthly Figure Drawing Spectacular: 1. This is a participation-only drawing class. No looky-loos! 2. Respect your model. Don't make gross comments. Don't ask her out. 3. No messy or stinky mediums. How do I know? Thanks to Carol Guess (whose prose poetry collection Tinderbox Lawn is not to be missed), who sent the flier all the way from Hamsterdam to Chicago, where it looks really nice on the fridge. Thanks, Carol!

The April issue of ARTnews...

...has a write-up--with pictures!--of Live Nude Girl in their "Art Talk" section. Sharing real estate there are Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and Yoko Ono. Not bad. Thanks to Ann Landi for the write-up and to Beth Rooney and Salvatore Del Deo for the images.

One Hundred Things I Loved About Touring the United States with Kathleen Rooney (Part One: The First Fifty)

1. Riding the Metro from the Green Line at the airport to the Blue Line to the Red Line to Hollywood, a surprisingly fun hours-long trip that allowed us to take in a whole lot of the city, including plenty of the parts where people tell you not to go. My favorite was South Central, where people were nicer and more helpful than almost any other place in any other city in the world. Michael Moore was right about South Central Los Angeles. It's a vibrant community, not a hellhole, and I liked it plenty.

2. Not Touring the Museum of Death (a relief!)

3. Standing on Cowboy Gene Autry's Walk of Fame star.

4. Meeting a bookstore employee at L.A.'s Skylight Books, remarking upon how friendly she was, liking her intensely, learning later that she was the fiction writer and anthologist K. Kvashay-Boyle, who I had already admired on the page.

5. Kicking it with Clark Harding, screenwriter and Antarctic explorer.

6. Talking shop with Joshuah Bearman, admiring his new beard and bow tie, learning about the legend of Master Legend, the Orlando-area vigilante crimefighter.

7. Walking San Francisco.

8. Eating all the foods of the world in San Francisco, including (a first!) Taiwanese.

9. Eating said foods of the world with George Awad, host and tour guide extraordinaire.

10. In the Mission, meeting a Guatemalan man in a Mexican restaurant who was reading a library edition of Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories, translated into Spanish from an English edition translated from Yiddish. Also: having this moment with this man without either of us actually using words the other knew. Hooray for Isaac Bashevis Singer!

11. Meeting Peter Orner, buying his book, reading it later that night, wishing I had read it before I met him so I could have talked with him about it when I met him.

12. Reading with Daniel Handler.

13. Drinking with Daniel Handler.

14. Eating lots of meals with Kathleen Rooney (hereafter I'll refer to her as Kathy), whose vegetarian ways helped nudge me toward eating more healthily, and thereby feeling better than I would otherwise have felt, and also probably keeping me from falling ill while on the road. The first of many admirable things I learned, in fact, from traveling with her.

15. Bitching about the weather in Portland but sort of liking Portland anyway.

16. Bitching about the semi-creepy guys in Portland who came out on account of the idea of "Live Nude Girl," but sort of liking the semi-creepy guys in Portland anyway.

17. Meeting Jonathan Evison, the hardest working man in fiction publishing. He brought tiny hot dogs and Twinkies to our reading at the University Bookstore in Seattle. He invited everyone at the reading to the after-party. Even the bookstore employees followed us over. No debauchery followed, so far as I could tell. What did was plenty of warm conversation, jokes, talk about literature, talk about the economy. A theology professor held forth in one corner about the death of God, and a factory worker held forth in another about gaming the Washington state unemployment system. I wrote a blog post about Jonathan Evison wearing rouge, but turns out he doesn't wear any. He is gifted with the natural coloration of an Abercrombie and Fitch model. I took notes but couldn't figure out how to replicate the genetics.

18. Watching Kathy cycle through her material before settling on the crowd-pleasing piece -- the essay on photography -- that became her standard reading material. Watching her progress as a reader from good to very good to, by day six or so, world-class pro.

19. Taking a chance in Bellingham, and reading from "A Love Story," a slower story about a closeted gay man who is also a fundamentalist preacher, and connecting with several people in the audience in a way that the slicker, more thrilling work never could quite match.

20. Hanging out with Carol and Elizabeth, poets extraordinaire, in Bellingham. Sitting around their table and working, the four of us, like we were real writers, and enjoying the quiet communion of that time of work.

21. Eating Indian food and gossiping in Tacoma with Jason Skipper, author of one of the most beautiful not-yet-published novels in America.

22. Fighting with the gas station attendant outside SeaTac, and making our flight only because of Kathy's uber-organization.

23. Regarding with sheer pleasure the magenta binder of maps, directions, expenditures, and receipts that Kathy collated with a care not unlike the care she invests in making and publishing beautiful books for other people at Rose Metal Press.

24. Flying over Big Sky country, reading Amy Wilentz's grossly underrated The Rainy Season, which is the best account by anyone anywhere of the pivotal late '80's in Haiti.

25. Learning that Minneapolis is one of the best cities in the world. The people are warm there, the politics are just right, and when you read at the Book Loft, they put your name in pink letters on the streetside marquee, and send a photographer to follow you all night and give you a CD-ROM full of pictures before you leave.

26. Learning that Rebecca Kanner, our guest reader in Minneapolis, was as cool in person as she seemed to be from her work. Loving her, loving her, loving her.

27. Hanging out afterward at a dive bar with Rebecca's friends, whose stories and regalements included talk of intercontinental expeditions, detainments by Uzbekistani police officers, bribes paid, motorcycles wrecked on icy ponds, and heroin dens disrupted by the vice of virtue.

28. MegaBussing for eight dollars one way, Minneapolis to Milwaukee.

29. Watching Kathy skillfully defuse a semi-skillful MegaBus proposition, a thing of dicey sketchy beauty I hadn't known enough about the world to imagine possible.

30. Eating strips of bacon wrapped in cheese wrapped in egg rolls, deep friend, and washed down with pitchers of beer, in Milwaukee, with the poet Drew Blanchard.

31. Talking Peruvian poetry, political violence, and the Shining Path, while drinking Peruvian drinks with a Peruvian poet (in Milwaukee!)

32. Spending more less the last of a buddy's record advance while all-night carousing on Division Street, in Chicago.

33. Playing uno with my brother and sister-in-law, in Chicago.

34. Reading to a packed-out bar on the north side, in Chicago.

35. Standing three inches from three Vincent van Gogh self-portraits, in Chicago.

36. Reading with real true personal hero Roy Kesey, in Chicago, and also oversleeping in the bed next to Roy Kesey's, both of us snoring I'm told, in Chicago.

37. Talking Postevangelical Literature, comic books, the sexual lives of the ladies of the cloth, and the apocolypse, with Pinckney Benedict, David McGlynn, Scott Kaukonen, and Angela Pneuman, while a standing room only audience egged us on, in Chicago.

38. Meeting Beth Rooney, soon-to-be-famous photographer, in Chicago.

39. Dammit, I really loved Chicago.

40. Finally meeting Martin Seay, Kathy's husband and author of a manuscript for a novel whose ambition seems to me to rival William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom, and Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code, and both at once, and maybe it will appeal to both audiences, and maybe I just got in on the ground floor -- Fanboy #1. I'm claiming it. This was also in Chicago.

41. The unexpected beauty of Boston from the vista the airplane achieves upon approach -- the buildings, the harbor, the crazy cow path road shapes.

42. Reading with Steve Almond, whose generosity extended to gifts of rarish sweet candies in a paper dime store bag.

43. A magical evening in Provincetown, among the best and smallest crowd of the tour, a crowd that interrupted the reading to cheer or praise the work, and a crowd that brought beer.

44. A magical evening in Provincetown (Part II), at the townie bar, where a drag queen regaled us with stories from his wedding and his cab company, and then bought copies of both our books.

45. Eating avocado wraps the next morning in Provincetown, while sitting on a bench in the beach sand, overlooking the bay, contemplating the Atlantic beyond, dreaming of New York City.

46. Walking Provincetown one last time, among the ghosts of summers past, all the way to the lighthouse.

47. Hearing the good news that Kathy was going to be a guest on Talk of the Nation!!!

48. Sleeping an extra hour in the car while Kate and Kathy navigated Boston's downtown one-ways and got us safely to the rental car drop-off.

49. Reading V.S. Naipaul on a Chinatown bus full with people for whom English is not language number one, and discussing politics in Chad with a woman from Chad, who said, "Would you ever like to visit Chad?" (Yes, I would!)

50. Arriving in New York! Drinking coffee in Chinatown! Hopping the subway to Brooklyn!

In our next installment: 25 Readings in One Day! Tao Lin! Tacos! Snow Falling in Memphis! Snowplows Necessary In Arkansas! A Birthday Party! Interstates! Aaron Burch!

The Short Review and Bookslut on In the Devil's Territory

There's an extraordinarily generous new review of In the Devil's Territory by British critic Susannah Rickards up at The Short Review. Rickards writes: "Everyone who reads or writes short fiction should take a look at this debut collection. Missing out on it would be like missing out on Greene, Carver, Munro . . ." More here.



And there's a new post about the book and particularly the story "A Day Meant to Do Less" at the Bookslut blog. Nina MacLaughlin writes: "In Kyle Minor’s debut collection In the Devil’s Territory (which came out late last year; which I’ve written about elsewhere; which more than warrants continued discussion), sex weaves in and out of the stories, a powerful, destructive force, a location of massive self-deception and self-denial. The sexual situations Minor sets up are baleful, uncomfortable, sad. He explores the shadowy pockets of our hearts and heads, the places we avoid, because what we find there is weird, off, wrong, and sort of scary." More here.

Live Nude Girl gets 8 out of 10 nipples....

...from Campus Progress! To give some sense of scale, this occurs on the same page where the new Decemberists album gets "8 out of 10 dog-eared 19th-century Penny Dreadfuls" and U2 gets "9 out of 10 earnest rock stars."

Read Caroline Hagood's review in its entirety here.

Imitation is the sincerest form...

...of affectionate mockery, hence my co-workers' leaving a copy of the hot new book, Live Nude Boy: Shake It, Shake it, Shake It, Till You Can't Shake No More, on my chair for me to find when I made my triumphant return yesterday morning: Thanks, guys! Also waiting for me? The following sign, courtesy of Sendy......and peanut-butter blondies......courtesy of Jeffrey. If you are curious about how he made the culinary magic happen, then might I suggest you take a look at Jeffrey's blog? Welcome to the working week.

Long Sunday afternoon of the heart

On the last leg of my most recent journey back to Chicago (after the drive from Carmel to downtown Indy, after the Megabus from there to Union Station, and after the El from there to the Granville stop, on the walk from there to my apartment), I saw the following sign on the door to a barber shop and I had to stop and take a picture: Let's get a closer look: Maybe because I was sleep-deprived, alone, and overly emotional, this sign seemed to speak directly to me. Something about its DIY hand-lettered quality and its overall semi-comical questionable believability (fishing? really??) reminded me of the tour that Kyle and I had just about finished. It still seems unreal to me that we really went out and did what we did. And that we were able--considering costs, work committments, family obligations, the shit-tanking economy, the panic in the publishing industry, etc. etc. etc.--to do what we did at all, and to have had such a fantastic time (I did, anyway) doing it.

Another reason the sign's message felt especially relevant is that I asked for and received an approximately two-month leave from my office job in order to do the tour. Now, having not shown up in my cubicle since January 30, I will report back there as per usual by 8:30 am this coming Monday. So basically, the "go fishing" part of my recent life is just about over, and the "back soon" part is about to begin.

You know that sense of protracted finality you get on a Sunday afternoon or evening after a weekend particularly well-spent? The feeling that the all the fun and freedom you've had is ending, and that all that opportunity you had to do whatever you wanted is, at least temporarily, at an end? This whole week has felt like that. And I actually really love my normal job. I can't imagine how this would feel if I didn't. So thanks to my employer for letting me go away, and, more importantly, to letting me come back; catch you soon, back in Cube City.

Now the two friends climb up, up to the high balconies.

Kyle and I had to limit our travels to the continental United States, but intrepid super-fans Lisa (left) and Mansi (right) made sure that Live Nude Girl got a European vacation: They are pictured here reading LNG on a scenic promontory at Gibralfaro Castle in Malaga, Spain, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Spring Break 09! Thanks, you two.

Hoosier Daddy?

Last night was our penultimate appearance--the second-to-last stop on the epic Live Nude Girl in the Devil's Territory tour--and the 24th city out of 25 was Indianapolis. It's a five or so hour drive from Carbondale to Indy (plus, you jump a time zone, so you lose an hour). Luckily, Kyle (who did all the driving) and I were well-rested, a fact I attribute--in my case, at least--to there having been ballerinas in the room where I'd slept the night before: Improbably restful natural sleep has happened three times so far on the tour (twice at Carol and Elizabeth's and now once at Rebecca's) and I'm beginning to think ballerinas are somehow more effective than Ambien. When we got to Marian College, where we were hosted by Andrew Scott (pictured below, rocking the mic), whose fiction chapbook Modern Love I highly recommend... ...I couldn't decide which section of Live Nude Girl to read, so I asked the students, some of whom are pictured here... ...to kick it democracy-style and vote for whether they wanted to hear a chapter that was more about sex, or one that was more about death. As in Carbondale, sex won by a landslide, even though (or maybe because?) it was a Catholic college, and we were clearly, as indicated by the World's Largest Cross by the side of I-57... ... in God's country. After the reading, Kyle and I parted ways, not to be reunited until May 18th, when we'll be reading with Zach Dodson and Gina Frangello in Chicago at the Book Cellar. He headed down the lonesome highway to Muncie, and I went to Carmel with one of my oldest friends, Liz... ...who I met 15 years ago, during our freshman year at Downers Grove North High School in Downers Grove, Illinois. Go Trojans! Thanks to her, her husband Dustin, and their son Marcus (pictured here, being really excited about drinking tiny bits of water from his mom's plastic straw)... ...for having me, and for driving me to the Megabus stop downtown this morning, so that I could be delivered safely back to Chicago this early afternoon.

In conclusion, here is a picture of a record-player that was in the same room as the ballerinas: Why? Mostly because I like it. But also maybe because it feels like Kyle and I have set some kind of record in the world of DIY touring? And because I never met a pun I didn't like? I'm inevitably sad when something comes to an end, even when said something sort of sucked sometimes (which, for the record (Get it? Sorry, I can't help myself.) this tour pretty much didn't). So I am happy to say that this is not good-bye, not yet. This is still until next time.

Homewood, Kankakee, Gilman, Rantoul, Champaign-Urbana, Mattoon, Effingham, Centralia, and DuQuoin...

...are the towns you pass through when you are riding the Amtrak Saluki to Carbondale, Illinois. In addition to possessing a certain romance, trains provide an excellent environment for getting work done while you are en route. But even then, there comes a point (about four hours in, this time) when all you can do is look pensively out the window and take self-portraits for your blog (special thanks to Alexis, who is 8, for helping me pick which one to post here): Once our train arrived--only half an hour late, which is really pretty decent in Amtrak time--the whole town of Carbondale was Spring-ing its heart out (thanks, Tree!).... ...and Kyle was there (thanks, Kyle!) to pick me up at the station and then head off in search of a slice of chocolate banana cream pie for me... ...and then to a bar called--fittingly, given the subject matter of the tour, "Booby's"--for a ham and cheese sub for Kyle, tempting though it would have been for him to pick up some Chik-Fil-A, whose signs pit one poor doomed animal against another in a desperate and poorly spelled fight for life: After that, we gave a reading that was very hot and not just because of the winsome... ...and stylishly dressed audience: I mean, that too, but also, the room was just really hot. After that, we went to Fujiyama, a Japanese steak house in a strip mall. Although we did not sit in the stunt cooking section where, we are told you risk getting your beard set on fire or at least losing an eye, we still had a lovely time. Special thanks to Pinckney Benedict for bringing the funny to our intros, and to Laura Benedict (pictured below) for reading with us and for the delicious dinner... ...and to Jon Tribble and Allison Joseph (pictured below) for hanging out and adding to the photographic documentation of the evening's events: Thanks also to Rebecca and Brian (and Karma and Alexis) for cleaning their rooms and hosting us at their home in Herrin, Illinois. Tomorrow morning, Kyle and I will hit the road again and tomorrow night we will read at 7:00 at Marian College in Indianapolis. But before we go to bed to rest up for that, here is one more picture of the sky above the SIU Student Center, both because it is pretty and because it reminds me of Elisa Gabbert who had lots of cloud formations in her poems when we read in California last week. This one's for you, EG. Good night out there, everybody, wherever you are.

Surf's up!

Many aspects of our trip to California were so improbably beautiful and fun, they felt unreal. Some of them actually were unreal, such as this faux-horse outside a storefront in the quaint and hilly town of Ramona, former turkey-producing capital of the United States: Numerous other things were fully real, though, including our enthusiastic audience… …at Cal State San Marcos… …at the reading we gave there… …as well as the beach, of course… …the mountain scenery… …Lester the parrotlet (pictured with Lorraine)… …and even the squirrels: The food was superb, and the fresh produce was beyond. Witness the berries and bee pollen on the acai bowl I ordered (when in Rome) when we stopped in Encinitas on the way from the airport to Carlsbad: But Elisa and I also really… …really loved the pickled vegetables: And it felt like Happy Hour there all the time: Spring Break 09! Thanks so much to Mark, pictured with us on the beach trying to look intense and perhaps even spiritual (not our forte?)... …and Lorraine for being phenomenal hosts. Thanks also to the Cal State audience for being so laugh-y and attentive, and to California for embodying such a weird yet appealing dream. Kyle and I are hitting the road again tomorrow, and will be reading in Carbondale, IL on the SIU campus tomorrow at 4:00, so if you are in downstate Illinois (or Kentucky or Indiana or Missouri or thereabouts), come on by.

California, here we come.

"We" being Elisa Gabbert and me that is.

We are flying--from Boston and Chicago, respectively--into the San Diego airport tomorrow morning, because tomorrow night, we are doing the Community & World Literary Series at Cal State San Marcos, further detais about which you can find here. A really important detail is that we will be reading collaboratively and individually, which basically makes this three--three!--readings in one. The event is free, but really, that's a lot of bang for your literary buck. So if you are anywhere near Southern California/Northern Mexico tomorrow evening, stop on by. And speaking of details, regardless of where you are, you can stop by our blog "Even the Details Have Details" any time.

Wordslingers!

Everyone's always warning you to beware the ides of March, but this year I have to say my ides went pretty well. In addition to the Woman Made reading yesterday, I got to appear on the local poetry radio show Wordslingers based out of Loyola University and located in this building (which I will admit, at night, looks a little worth bewaring)......and at 88.7 FM, and co-hosted by Michael Watson and Shelley Nation. Also appearing was Joris Soeding, the managing editor of Another Chicago Magazine and the author of two chapbooks: Trees.Otherness.Instance. and Surfaces Diminished. Thanks to Michael and Shelley for having me (and for being totally cool when I almost accidentally swore in a poem on live radio, despite having been told: "Because of the FCC, no profanity or overtly pornographic or graphic descriptions of sexual interaction can be allowed on air") and to Joris for reading the best poem about attending a Barbie convention in Schaumburg that I have ever heard.

Support good art--shop Woman Made.

Many's been the time in my working life (including my years as a live nude girl, not to mention the ones spent slaving in the white collar sweatshop known as adjunct teaching) that I've ardently wished to be part of a union--all that working together for the common benefit/sticking it to the proverbial Man. Unfortch, that dream has never been realized, although reading today at Woman Made was almost as good because they are a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization whose goal "is to support women in the arts by providing opportunities, awareness, and advocacy," and which "specifically accomplishes this through monthly thematic exhibitions which raise public awareness and recognition of women's cultural contributions." Thanks to Woman Made and Nina Corwin, I got to read this afternoon... ...in their space at 685 N. Milwaukee in Chicago, for a lovely audience... ....while being recorded by Kurt Heintz (to whom the arm pictured on the left belongs), along with Alice George... ...Kristy Odelius... ...Elise Paschen...
...Parneshia Jones... ... and Jesse Lee Kercheval. Thanks to everyone for coming, to Janet McKenzie (the artist responsible for the beautiful piece hanging behind everyone in these pictures), and to my fellow readers for fitting so much pure, unadulterated woman-made awesome into one modestly-sized art space. Thanks also to Caitlin Rogers for coming to the reading and announcing the call for submissions by Wisecrack: Feminism & Comedy, because who (besides Christopher Hitchens (that jerk)) says women can't be funny?

Afterwards, Martin and I went home and I baked a bunch of butterscotch chocolate chip cookies, mostly because I miss cooking when I'm on the road, but also because it seemed like a nice third-wave feminist kind of post-WomanMade reading thing to do. Hear me roar. Also? Come see me read with Elisa in the Community and World Literary Series at Cal State San Marcos later this week, on Thursday.