A few changes ...

The WordFest schedule has had a few changes - not unusual for an event with so many particulars - "moving parts", as the saying has it, all of them human. It remains dynamic. So:

The Sunday reading at the Flood Gallery will start at 1:00 pm, rather than noon.

The cast of Flood readers has had a minor change, as well: I'll now be reading at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center at 7:00 pm Sunday, rather than at the Flood.

Glenis had to cancel her workshop on Saturday.

Mine still starts at 11:00 am tomorrow morning, but we'll gather at the Humanities Lecture Hall at 10:45 before heading to the Botanical Gardens.

Speaking of workshops ...

I'll crash. The first two events, though, have been really involving and fascinating, and introduced me to poets whose work I didn't really know. I skipped the Green Door event at Malaprops earlier tonight just to have a little downtime; last night some fifteen of us went to the New French Bar and had too much fun until too late. We'll probably do something similar tomorrow, since Galway seems to have an interest in exploring downtown Asheville after his reading.

Today a group of us took Galway out to Camp Rockmont, home of Black Mountain College when he attended a summer session in 1947. It was the first time he'd been back since then, and the re-encounter seemed to spur recollections of friends and fellow writers among the faculty and students - and of skinny dipping with a lady friend in one of the nearby streams.

Sebastian and I will try to schedule some studio time with Galway to do a (somewhat more) formal interview between now and his departure Sunday night; I expect we'll be joined by the electric Kerouac scholar Audrey Spenger, who's in town this weekend to continue her research into the opening of American letters - and the culture at large - that began in the fifties and sixties.

And that's the news from the festival trenches for now.

(Sounds of incipient sleep.)