…and so many things happened that I cannot possibly blog about them all, but I can offer you the following highlights reel: Abby Beckel and I womanned the Rose Metal Press table with the help of many wonderful volunteers–thanks, volunteers! On Thursday, our outfits coordinated and we didn’t even plan it:

Also? You can’t really see it in the above photograph, but Abby is sporting a piece of RMP jewelry custom-made for her by her step-mom:

Gold Wake Press had a reading on Wednesday night at Trident Bookstore and Cafe, where I read from Robinson Alone and where I got to meet my fellow forthcoming GWP author Lesley Jenike (below, left) among many excellent others:

All throughout the bookfair, various GWP authors took turns signing at and staffing the GWP table. I wore one of these mustaches, pictured here high above the Boston snow, when I worked my shift:

I also spent a fair amount of time looking out our hotel room window at this so-ugly-it’s-beautiful building, and later found out that it’s where Elisa works when she’s in town:

RMP author B.J. Best read from his just-released videogame-inspired prose poetry collection, But Our Princess is in Another Castle, in The Rally reading at the Distillery. Each author who read had a broadside made of one of their poems, including B.J.’s poem “Asteroids”: 

The bookfair, as ever, was my favorite part and I came home with many, many, so many new things I can’t wait to read, including: Poem Strip by Dino Buzzati (I actually devoured this one on the plane home), Fort Red Border by Kiki Petrosino, L.A. Liminal by Becca Klaver, of the mismatched teacups, of the single-serving spoon by Jenny Boully, A Whaler’s Dictionary by Dan Beachy-Quick, The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail by Gregory Sherl (who blurbed B.J.’s book! and which I’d read already but wanted to own!), a four-pack of Jaimy Gordon titles from McPherson and Company, as well as a four-pack of chapbooks from Hyacinth Girl Press, including Dick Wad by Deena November, [Mary]: by J. Hope Stein, Salt Ballads by Edith Sodergran and Brooklyn Copeland, and Book Four by Nina Pollari, plus a ton of literary journals. Thanks, AWP; you were exhausting, but I miss you already.