NACCS Pictures, and hmm... other thoughts.

Some Pictoral Reflections on NACCS:

ire'ne - special guest reader of the eve' reading at Cosina del Caribe in Mission, Texas.

Amalio Madueno, Maria Miranda Maloney, Lady Mariposa, Lau Cesarco Eglin, and... ME! :) I love these peeps!

THE AUTHOR TABLE

Me, enjoying the evening with the Mouthfeel Poets and my mom! And Daniel's trying to stalk us, or something.

The evening's featured readers! I'm in the back.

Here's Lady Mariposa, kicking off the reading! She was reading some pieces from her CD, Hecho en El Valle. Is that a Gloria Anzaldua t-shirt? Yeah, I think it is... ;)

Me, 'womaning' the book table! I see ire'ne and Daniel were with me :) (Daniel, though, is obviously not 'womaning' anything)

My professor, Emmy, read poems too. She has this amazing piece about the Rio Grande river. Maria pointed out to me that most professors don't read with their students, attend their readings, and show support like Emmy does. So I think we're really lucky to have her here at UTPA :-) She's kind of taught me everything I know about writing poems, and has been there since my cliched love poem beginnings - LoL!

There I am! Reading "La Pulga Beauties".

Here's Lauren! She always reads with such attitude ;) If I remember correctly, she was giving some advice on what to do if you get thrown into jail.

Dr. G at the guitar! She sang a really beautiful, original song about waterfalls/immigration. It was so lovely to hear her play. She's actually a Bilingual Education professor here at UTPA. I had no idea she was such a poet (and singer, and guitarista)

The next day, at the McAllen convention center book signing. According to Lady Mariposa and the Poet Mariachi, on this night - I was made an honorary Mexican :-p

Phew! No wonder I was so exhausted. It was a long few days, but a wonderful few days at the same time.

This week, I've been keeping busy. I'm trying to keep consistant with all my submissions (sent out... maybe 6 different packs this week?), I wrote a new poem - "A Taste for Autumn" - (which got GREAT workshop feedback last night) and I'm focusing on edits for my critical introduction to the thesis. I'm having some trouble FOCUSING and prioritizing my tasks. Every two seconds I want to check duotrope, submishmash, and my email. I'm obsessing, and its bad.

I'm just so nervous, though.... about everything :-/ Well, these next few months are going to be crucial ones for me. So it's definitely time to buckle down, and get to work. Then, I'm off to bigger, better things - I keep getting little 'signs' that I need to keep on going and do that whole PhD thing.

Ok - that's it for now! Have a wonderous weekend, all!