While the bulk of my papers and presentations tend to be library-related (since that's the career that pays ye ole bills), I wanted to start building up my English/Creative Writing chops. (Largely to woo the English department here into considering me for additional classes, should they need folks, but also just to keep my skills and research in that area up to date and sharp.) I got lucky, and have had a few papers accepted that I'm very proud of.
Because of those acceptances, I'll be doing a wee bit of traveling in the fall (okay, more-than-normal traveling, for me) to present a couple of papers in Europe. (Hitting Ireland this summer has given me the travel bug.) In October, I'll be presenting my paper "Mythology as curricular crossroads: The intersection of constructivist theory, Women’s Studies, Creative Writing, and student research skill development" at the Myth & Interdisciplinarity International Conference in Madrid. After that, I'll be headed to Salzburg to present "Adding meat to metaphorical bones: Research, critical thinking, and leveraging the academic library for creative writing praxis" at the 2nd Global Conference on Writing: Paradigms, Power, Poetics, Praxes. The generosity of my library dean and the University in terms of funding are making this possible, as I wouldn't have a prayer of capitalizing on this without their help.
There are a number of other book chapters and paper presentations also in the hopper for fall, but they're largely library science or EdD-program related, so I'll spare you the detail. And then, of course, there's EdD comps and dissertation proposal defense in August and dissertating (is that a verb?) in the fall. Suffice it to say, fall and the remainder of this summer will be characterized by writing, writing, writing.
I also just received an email that my short story, "The Patron Saint of easy Girls" made it through the first pass and is moving on to the judges in a flash fiction competition. Which reminded me that I have an unfinished flash fiction collection I was working on, plus the poetry collection, plus the essays. I am seriously considering cancelling cable so that I am less distracted by the boob tube and have more writing time. But, the Food Network. (That's pretty much the entire reason I keep the cable subscription. Cooking competitions turn me on - probably because my own kitchen is far too small to work in.)
Also had lunch with one of the English faculty today, as she's been teaching the CNF class for awhile and is an old pro - I wanted to pick her brain about syllabi and such. The sushi was good, the conversation was fun (I really must get out and socialize more), and I feel like I'm on the right track with building the syllabus. I'm really looking forward to teaching this class. I'm going to try to polish off the syllabus this weekend so that can be done, as well as the syllabus for my Violence & Reality TV in Literature class for the freshmen.
And a book chapter and a conference paper and maybe a paper or two coming due for class. So, as usual, you can find me at the library - even when it's closed.
