- There was The Rose O'Neill Literary House table in the Bookfair, #1724!
- Poet Matt Rasmussen signed the entire edition of Literary House Press's 2015 AWP Commemorative Broadside, a collaboration with Water~Stone Review which featured his poem "Outgoing."
- I attended fantastic and absorbing panel discussions about "New Trends in Literary Publishing," "The Rise of the Chapbook," "The Bigness of the Small Poem," and "Fascinated or Haunted: Why We Continue to Write & Rewrite Fairy Tales." All topics that are important and exciting to me. And I took lots of notes!
- And probably most exciting of all was our official Cherry Tree Launch Party at the Hyatt Regency! What a fabulous evening that was.
 |
| Managing table 1724 with the fantastic Julie Armstrong at my side. |
My good friend Jenny Gallagher, a Minnesota-native transplanted to little Chestertown, was awesome enough to make plans to visit home while I was at AWP. She made sure that I left the gigantic conference bubble for a while to see more of the actual Minneapolis.
She took me to a very filling breakfast at Tiny Diner, which is only appropriate since our friendship was forged over pastry and tea when I worked at Evergrain Bread Co.
Banana-chocolate chip pancakes and maple links. Delicious chai lattes. This is what our friendship is made of. And me asking Jenny to say everything in her kick-ass Minnesotan accent.
Later that day, we ate fantastically rich Thai food for dinner and browsed/shopped at Magers & Quinn, one of my new favorite indie bookstores.
 |
| The sisters Gallagher! |
On Saturday morning (before Team Lit House snuck out of the conference early), Jenny and her lovely sister Katie Gallagher (who has previously visited little Chestertown!) took me on a last Minneapolis excursion. We went to Sunstreet Breads for breakfast (pastries! tea!). I got a chocolate-almond bearclaw that I just had to photograph because it actually looks like a bear claw! Just look at that pastry-fist wrapped around a paw-full of chocolate-and-almond goodness. And a chai latte, of course.
 |
| (I also bought a rhubarb turnover for the plane later because I have serious pastry needs.) |
We followed up our delicious gluttony with a brisk walk around Lake Harriet, a visit to the famous sculpture garden, and ended up at a letterpress shop that Jenny and Katie had scouted out earlier: Lunalux!
Lunalux was half working-print-shop and half storefront. There was a poster on the window advertising an offsite AWP reading that I'd just missed the night before (of course!). And when I went inside, the letterpress lockup for that poster was still in the proof press where it was printed. I loved that.
 |
| Last night's party & the morning after. |
Then it was all luggage and airports and planes all the way back to Maryland. But it was such a fun and full visit to Minneapolis. I can't wait to visit again! Jenny and Katie and I will still have lots to see and do. In the meantime, it's hard to beat coming back home to this:
