1. AWP is upon us. The [PANK] crew descends from near and far, some of us tomorrow, some of us later this week. Here is a list of where we plan to be. Follow our live Twitter feed to see where we really are when the time comes.

2. But we know for sure we’ll be here, and so should you. RSVP to Convocation In Chicago.

3. [PANK] is Invading Portland and Seattle at the end of March. Check out our call for on the ground assistance and readers.

4. Submissions are open for the Special Parenting Issue and the Special Pulp Issue.

5. Have you gotten your copy of [PANK]6 yet? Here’s the link to the New York Times write up, as if you haven’t already seen it! Click here to order yours today. They’re going fast, so don’t delay.

“You are perfect and clean and floating. Everything was clean about us. Everything was perfect until you burned away.”
Frank Hinton, “All Of The People In These Pictures Are Dead Now.”

I read once that burning was the best form of purification. The best transition to the perfect, the cleanliness and possibly the emptiness. Sometimes I am scared to read such things.

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For those of you who expressed interest in this thing, my apologies for dropping off the map. AWP is upon us and, well, AWP is upon us…

Anywho…We’re back in the saddle organizing readings for Portland, Oregon, on Friday, March 23, and for Seattle, Washington, on Saturday, March 24.

If you’re a [PANK]Contributor interested in reading, please send an email to editor@pankmagazine.com. If you’ve already contacted me in this regard, I’ve got your name and will be in contact with you shortly (thanks for your patience). And FYI, initial feedback for Portland was heavy and Seattle, not so much. So if you’re in Seattle vicinity, so much the better.

Also, if there’s anyone on site in either city who is interested in helping organize, please speak up. It’s always useful to have someone on the ground for these things.

And last, but certainly not least, if you are a dedicated Pankster in either city, please save the dates and plan to come party with us.

As always, stay tuned!

Today, this, from Quick Fiction editor and one of my favorite [PANK]Contributors, Jennifer Pieroni.

“Long live the lit mag! But, alas, not Quick Fiction. After many wonderful years, we’re ceasing publication. Thank you for supporting, reading and constantly challenging us to send you the best little book we could manage. We’ve greatly enjoyed working with and following so many fine authors.

While there will be no new issues of Quick Fiction, we do have some back issues, which we’d like to offer at the lowest price possible, $4 each. As always, shipping is free. Visit our website to see what’s still available: http://quickfiction.org/category/issues/.”

I don’t know the backstory here, not being the most up-to-date on worldwidewebbernets gossip, but Quick Fiction was one of my personal favorites, and I’m really sorry to see it go. Boo.

Jake ‘The Raging Bull’ LaMotta, Muhammad ‘The Greatest’ Ali, Johnny ‘Mi Vida Loca’ Tapia, Arturo ‘Thunder’ Gatti, Bernard ‘The Executioner’ Hopkins – those were my childhood idols.  I wanted to do what they did.  I wanted to make a living trying to stop someone else from living, and I wanted to do it in the ring while a crowd of slave-wage earning drunkards and slave-wage exploiting cokeheads – all pretending they were me – cheered as I beat my opponent – who they all pretended was their cokehead employers or their drunken employees – as bloody as a Sunday in Northern Ireland when a peaceful protest is underway and an army of British Soldiers need something to smoke.

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1.Hey, did you see us, along with some other great magazines, get a little nugget of love from the New York Times last week?! It was in this week’s Sunday print issue, too. Check it out.

2. We can hardly stand ourselves waiting for AWP. Only ten more days! RSVP to our event, Convocation in Chicago, here and be sure to come say hi at Book Fair table L14.

3.The February online issue is live and enormous.

4. Now until July 1st we’re accepting submissions for our Special Pulp Issue. Guest edited by Court Merrigan, see what we are looking for here and then submit here.

5. The Parenting Special Issue is also still accepting submissions.

6. We hate seeing your friend request and not being able to do anything about it, but we’ve reached our limit. Facebook won’t let us have anymore friends. ‘Like’ our Facebook page to still get all the same updates.

The Rum Diary comes out on DVD tomorrow, and I haven’t been this terrified since the Halloween night it opened in theaters. I took the 14 Muni Bus to its midnight-showing and a limbless hobo offered to tuck me into bed later if I poured some of my Puerto Rican rum into his mouth.  I denied the hobo’s offer because I doubted his ability to tuck me in and because I was saving the rum to wash down the popcorn I planned on eating.  But I changed my plans when I got to the theater and in line behind a fat middle-aged white guy with a Kentucky accent who, like me, had a Hawaiian shirt, a bucket hat, and sunglasses on.  We were both smoking cigarettes out of holders, humming Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and swatting non-existent flies. . . and I decided I didn’t need popcorn.  I needed to share my bottle of rum with my comrade, the only other member of the Gonzo Guild in a line filled with Johnny Depp fanatics.  So back and forth that rum went, and swig by swig we drank it.

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Anchor Books

April, 2001 (hardcover originally published by Knopf, 2000)

Chosen by: Amye Archer

Maybe it’s the educator in me, but I have, throughout my reading lifetime, creating a series of benchmarks that a book must reach in order to resonate with me.  Safekeeping, the exquisite memoir written by Abigail Thomas, not only hit each one of those benchmarks, but redefined some of them.

A story of Thomas’ three marriages, or more importantly, the divorce from and subsequent death of her second husband, Safekeeping is a patchwork of grief and love:

I am remembering this time just before I knew you, and then I knew you, and then you died.  It makes the parenthesis within I lived most of my life.  Not knowing you, knowing you, and then you died.   

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“Far away from home, but never far away from me.”
All For the Best, Miracle Legion.

I have always had a shaky sense of “home.” I have lived in many places in my life, cementing to none. Never the real desire to return to any of them.

Maybe twenty cites spread out over multiple countries. Lived on a ship for about 100 days. There was at least one year when I camped outside more than living indoors.

My home is not a where. Maybe everyone already knows this, and I am the slow learner. Maybe if I lived differently?

My home is not a where. It is a who. She has been my home for the last ten years.