My Favorite New Toy 2

The other day I stumbled upon a new fun toy: World Cat. Whereas last year I was obsessed with Duotrope's Digest, my new favorite diversion is seeing how many libraries carry obscure and not-so-obscure publications. It even tells you how far away the libraries are from a chosen zip code. Someone in Brisbane could be reading the Mass Review or Gender in Archaeology right this second. Wow!

Fantastic Women

Last week M. & I went to a Tin House reading at the PPOW gallery in Chelsea. The evening was themed around women and the fantastic, with readings by Lucy Corin, Kelly Link, Shelly Jackson, and Samantha Hunt. The art work in the gallery, by Julie Heffernan, was most stunning, with pale female figures (self-portraits) in enormous fruit-or-flower headdresses and elaborate skirts made of animal carcasses. (I found the dead octopus especially charming.)

Whoever planned the minutia of the event thought of everything: magenta lilies filled the room with an almost-too-sweet-but-just-right scent; mini cupcakes frosted in a range of creamy pastels and dotted with bright pink, blue, and yellow sugar globs filled our mouths with delicious devil's food. Heffernan's work is, naturally, on the cover of Tin House's Fantastic Women issue. More events like this should be had. More.