second-year slacker.

Okay, I've been really bad about updating. But let me just say, second year is kicking my butt, running me over, backing up and running me over again. Things just seem incredibly busy. I love it, but it's exhausting. And I'm writing for a NYC-based website, so I'm trying to get as much work done as I can for them. All this while still struggling with this ridiculous fatigue. It's rare that I don't take at least one nap each day. Which really lowers my productivity. Anyway. We'll see what happens.

I do miss North Carolina. There are days where the homesickness comes over me so quickly I gasp. But it's not a searing pain like last year. Maybe because I am holding out hope of getting a job down there next year? I am craving a Bojangle's chicken biscuit like nobody's business, let me tell you. But for now I will have to make do with Cheerwine.

My classes are amazing. This Tuesday, 2 classmates and I are leading a discussion of ZIPPER MOUTH for my genre class -- and the author is going to be there. Eileen (professor) goes, "oh, by the way, Laurie's a friend of mine, so she'll be joining us." I swear my jaw hit the table. No pressure or anything. but I'm super excited about it -- this is why I came here. I have a wonderful workshop group, and my anti-heroines class is awesome, plus I've been emailing with the author Lidia Yuknavitch about her books, one of which I'm doing a project on for that class. I kind of want to BE Lidia.

I've read some really awesome books lately. Vanessa Veselka's ZAZEN was a book I've been wanting to read for over a year now, and could never find it. My friend Carrie picked it up when she went to Powell's, in Portland, and sent it to me when she was finished. It is the most odd, most lyrical/magical/not-quite-dystopian/off-center book, and I loved it. Something about the writing kept me reading. It's about this girl Della, who had a breakdown in college a few years ago. While working in a cafe, she becomes obsessed with self-immolators, and starts calling in bomb threats to places. Except eventually, the places she once called or imagined calling, start being bombed or attacked. It's hard to explain. But it's worth a read. Wendy Lawless is having her publisher send me a review copy of her memoir that comes out in January, CHANEL BONFIRE. I'm super excited about it and am planning on reviewing it for the Columbia lit mag website. And of course, the newest BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS, 2012 edition. This essay collection is a great thing to read if you're a nonfiction writer. Some alums from Columbia were in the 2011 edition, and every year there's a different guest editor. I have yet to be disappointed in these anthologies.
Sheila Heti is coming to Columbia to lecture (as is AM Homes and Mary Karr - HOW PSYCHED AM I????), so I read her newest book, HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE?. It's gotten rave reviews for being experimental, edgy, genre-bending......and I had to force myself to finish it. It's a novelized memoir of sorts that combines stream of consciousness, playwriting style, etc, and basically explores the question of how should a person be - especially if they are an artist. I don't know. Something about it felt forced and overly self-conscious, almost like Heti made the decisions she did with the idea of being "edgy" in mind. Or being transgressive. Not to mention it felt immensely pretentious and self-absorbed. (Yes, I get that memoirs are generally self-absorbed on principle, but there's a wrong way and a right way of doing it). So I guess I'll go to her lecture, if only to hear this darling of the young literati talk about her process. I just wish I enjoyed her book more. Maybe I'll try her short story collection.

And on another note, my ten year college reunion was this weekend. I'm old.