Reading (poetry) in UNL Amnesty’s Demand Dignity benefit concert
8:00 p.m., Saturday, January 28, 2012
Meadowlark Coffee & Espresso, 1624 South St., Lincoln, NE 68502

I hope to see you there!

In other contest and award news, forthcoming in my chapbook THE PUPPET WIFE, my piece “Pantomime: A Tragedy” was selected for the 2011 “Best of Spittoon” award, which includes an actual spittoon. I get a spittoon. They’re going to send me a spittoon. How cool is that? My father had a few spittoons around the house when I was a kid and I always thought they were kind of neat and a little bit sinister. I’m very excited to get my own.

In other news, I’m up in UNL’s January newsletter. I have poems in the current issues of Miller’s Pond, in the anthology Sunrise from Blue Thunder, the anthology Flashlight Memories (now available in ebook), and forthcoming in ABZ and The Adroit Journal.

Bloggers over in The Modcloth Blog discussed their love of chapbooks and posted this lovely picture of recent chaps they’ve been reading.

I’m delighted to see my little chapbook MY IMAGINARY in the bottom left hand corner.

Finally, late last year I created a BRANDING GIRLS giveaway on Goodreads.

What is the coolest, craziest, and most unbelievable thing is the number of people who have entered to win. As of right now as I’m typing this blog post, there are 203 people requesting a copy of BRANDING GIRLS. 203! My press run was only 250. I’m very sure I’ve sold 47+ copies. I don’t think there are 203 copies available. The contest ends in March, but it’s 203 and counting. Amazing.

I read five from the collection, but the door was open at the beginning of my reading and so there’s a bit of background noise in a few of the clips. I’m posting only the best.

I had a great time in STL!

Speaking of branding, I did do some tourist stuff while there, including the FREE tour of Anheuser-Bush. I’m not much for beer, any beer, American made or otherwise, but that caveat aside, Anheuser-Bush is smart in their marketing, promotion, and branding. First, the hour tour is FREE. You get to see the brewery, learn about the history of the company, and are walked around the “campus” of the company. This tour is lead by super-cute twenty-somethings who are smart, funny, and fit. They look like they would drink beer. They look like they’d be fun to hang out with. During the tour, you get to see the Clydesdale horses munching happily in an expansive arena. In the stables, the dalmatians, on cue, enter and mingle with the crowd, tails a-wagging. The dogs are friendly. They let you pet, scratch, and snap their picture. After the tour, you are given two FREE beers and as many FREE pretzels as you can eat and as much FREE Pepsi products as you can drink. Then you go home and tell all your friends about all the FREE stuff, post pictures of your FREE tour on Facebook, maybe *ahem* write about all the FREE stuff on your blog, and likely, have a new fondness, by the fact of all the FREENESS alone, for Anheuser-Bush.

Smart, smart, branding.

Second, “Housekeeping.”

I’ll try to post a few more once I check out the video.

This morning at 8:30 (can we say thank you daylight savings time. yes we can), I’m presenting in a panel on teaching and play. I’m very much looking forward to hearing my fellow panelist and bringing back some great teaching ideas to my classes this term.

Reading (poetry) at MMLA
12-1:30, Friday, November 4, 2011
St. Louis, Missouri

Reading (prose) at MMLA
8:30-10, Sunday, November 6, 2011
St. Louis, Missouri

I’m super excited for the reading and panel! I promise video clips when I return. In other news, I’m in UNL’s recent newsletter. The current issue of Cream City Review features two of poems on Matilda Fletcher from my dissertation. I’ve been working on getting stuff ready for my forthcoming chapbook SHE WHO LOVES HER FATHER from Dancing Girl Press. More on that soon.

In other news, I’m heading up to Omaha tomorrow to see my poem “The Purse” performed in Lit Undressed:

Performance (poetry) in Lit Undressed / Omaha Lit Fest
8 p.m., October 19, 2011
House of Loom, 1012 S. 10^th Street, Omaha, Nebraska

Sally Deskins has been compiling wonderful interviews in Les Femmes Folles with Nebraska women artists and writers like Judy Slater and Dana Fritz. I’m up next in “Women of LFF: Laura Madeline Wiseman.” I talk a little about my poem “The Purse.” I wrote the poem in the master poetry class Alicia Ostriker taught this past spring term. I’m really excited to see it performed!

In broadside news, if you’re not local and want a copy of Posturing and/or The Gift, I’ve made them available through paypal. Kate Johnson, my collaborator for the poetry + art broadsides, has been busy too. She’s listed all her remaining copies of the series on Etsy. As a small aside, I love Etsy. I’ve ordered my share of x-mas gifts from that great site.

In other news, Nebraska Life went digital with one of my poems. Mississippi Review has moved it’s online publications to Blip Magazine and reprints my poem “Elevator Girl Brand,” a poem that is collected in BRANDING GIRLS. Speaking of ekphrasis, I’ve been cited in Robert Denham’s POETS ON PAINTINGS: A BIBLIOGRAPHY (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2010). Finally, my little chapbook, PLASTIC MATCHES, is listed on Library Thing and Goodreads.

Not bad news as the weather chills toward Halloween.

I was a small intimate gathering, as regional academic conferences sometimes are, but a warm space where I even sold a chapbook. Yeah! I think though, other than a delicious dinner at Zio’s, the readings itself, and placing BRANDING GIRLS in someones hands, the highlight of the trip was at the beginning of the panel when the panel organizer introduced me as “Dr. Madeline Wiseman.” I know I just graduated PhD school in May, and this was the first academic anything I’ve really done since then, but it was totally weird and totally cool at the same time. I am a PhD, I thought to myself. Wow. When did that happen?