The Muse Wore Orange

--> First, a bulletin for Virginia fiction-lovers: if you live in Charlottesville or Richmond, within the next 48 hours you have a chance to hear the amazing Dylan Landis read. (I have raved about her book Normal People Don't Live Like This on this blog on previous occasions.) She will be accompanied by the equally amazing New Yorker Joanna Smith Rakoff. Here's a fancy write-up, and here are the bare bones details...

Wed., Oct. 28, 5:30 p.m. / Dylan Landis & Joanna Smith Rakoff / New Dominion Bookshop / 404 East Main Street (Downtown Mall) / Charlottesville, VA 22902

Thu., Oct. 29, 7 p.m. / Dylan Landis & Joanna Smith Rakoff / Chop Suey Books / 2913 West Cary Street / Richmond, VA 23221

..okay, back to our regularly scheduled post.

I'm very excited to join the ranks of the Norton poets over at the blog Poems Out Loud. Don't worry--Chicks Dig Poetry isn't going anywhere. But this will be a venue for longer think-pieces. Here's the opening snippet from my first post, "The Muse Wore Orange." For those who followed my Jentel posts, this was an essay I wrote during my June-July residency in the hills of Wyoming....

She stands by our front door: a painted cutout of a winged woman, complete with red spirals of hair. Angel, muse, safety monitor, she models the bright orange vest that each of us must wear if we venture into the hills surrounding the Jentel Artist Residency Program.

“So that you don’t get shot by hunters,” was the friendly instruction. “Or run down by truckers.”

You'll find the whole post here.