PCA/ACA: almost the end

The conference is over. I’m exhausted, mentally and physically, in the best ways. But it’s going to take me a couple of days to get around to writing a fuller account of my conference — the panels I attended, the ideas I heard or offered, the fiction I read, the friends and colleagues and scholars and writers I found. I have a lot in my journal (which I nearly lost, about which more in a whole separate post!), but I need to process and distill it all so I don’t overwhelm everyone with my notes and observations.

A couple of quick notes here: I was thrilled to hear some fantastic fiction and poetry this morning (William Woods, it was a pleasure to see you again! Jerry Bradley, I will always love your ability to make people laugh and contemplate at the same time with your poems. Millard Dunn, your raw, honest emotion and keen observation in poetry is always, always a delight).

I learned a LOT about comics at this conference, including in my final panel (Sean Connors, Amy Nyberg, and Anthony Warnke and Alison Cardinal, I thought I’d be burned out on comics by now, but you all rocked your panel!).

I also learned a LOT about pedagogy over the past few days, including a very cool panel today on Facebook in the classroom (Aimee Robison, way to hold your own as the sole panelist, and I look forward to bouncing ideas off you in the future!).

And San Antonio? You’re a strange, almost mystical city. I don’t always understand you, I don’t even always like you, but damn it if I don’t still love you. This town I grew up in or near is fast becoming one of my favorite places for conferences. Who would have guessed?

(I’ve been a bit remiss about posting during the conference, which I blame mostly on the hotel or the organizers or whoever decided to lock us all out of free wifi in the lobbies. But plenty of other conference attendees have been posting a lot, including the very cool Joe Historian. Go read it.)