calabash literary festival

I've heard really great things about the Calabash Literary Festival in Jamaica. It's going down end of May. Helon Habila will be there. Edwidge Danticat. Junot Diaz and Melvin Van Peebles. It was canceled last year, so I figure this one should be better than ever.

I'd really like to go, but not sure if it'll happen financially given my other plans to spend the summer in Nigeria. However, if it does, I am definitely staying a few extra days to lay on the beach.

Top literary agent Marie Brown is one of the organizers. I had sent her a proposal for my memoir--before it turned into a novel--and she sent back a wonderful note saying that she would have taken a look had her roster of clients not been completely booked. I am working on a few chapters so that I will have something on hand in the off chance that I do end up going and meeting her. I really hope she wasn't just blowing smoke up my ass with that letter. At any rate, I would remind her of it and insist she read my chapters--I can be very persuasive when it counts.

Editing has been real murder for me. I get totally overwhelmed and don't look at my writing for long stretches of time. It is the white elephant in the room. Nevertheless, I am still writing. This week, submitted an iStory to Narrative Magazine. Be warned, they are only 150 words long and yet they still charge 20 bucks a pop to read them.