Why it's nice to live in Iowa...

So I was walking around last night, after consuming much half-price-happy-hour sushi with Sonya (pics to come)...


And I thought, "I'll call Thisbe and Lee, see what they're up to...


But Lee was watching an athletic contest involving a ball, and he said Thisbe was at Prairie Lights for a reading...


So off I went to catch the tail end of the Dan Chaon reading and to suffer through the horrible Q&A that has to follow each reading.


Then, a bunch of us wandered next door. To Atlas.


Where I drank dirty vodka martinis for hours with Elizabeth McCracken, Edward Carey, Thisbe, Dan Chaon, a woman named Eden and her fella. Where we talked for hours about writing, the workshop, Rick Jackson (my undergrad teacher whom Edward and Elizabeth had recently seen in Prague), teaching, and all manner of fun things.

Where we answered and then forgot the answers to many important questions...

Where I found myself sighing becasue, though Iowa City has limitations of career, cheap airfares, and art films...

There is noplace else I know where you can have a night like that.


Where you can shoot the shit with Salmon Rushdie, compare spinach dip recipes.


Where Jeff Eugenides and Seamus Heaney can "happen" to be in the same bar.


Atlanta is so great, and I'm excited to go back. But man, I gotta find me some writers! Perhaps a visit to Athens is in order sooner, rather than later!