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800s: Literature & Rhetoric 801 Philosophy & theory
The Mississippi River Writers Confluence The Mississippi River Writers Confluence was cancelled due to lack of anybody showing up at the same place at the same time. They were all in their cubicles writing. Okay, sometimes they went out to the Zippee Mart for beer and fried chicken or milk and coffee, depending on whether it was p.m. or a.m. and if they were going to or coming from their night jobs or their day jobs. So scheduling was definitely a factor. Nevertheless, meetings did occur and words were exchanged. I clearly recall early one morning setting out my goods on a table in the corridor on the second floor of the student union building at Keystone College. The other tables around the atrium were rapidly filling up with sales reps from small publishing companies, bookstores, and graduate writing programs. Jeff was passing by and stopped to pick up a copy of riverrun. Oh what a feeling it was as something in it made him stop, then ever so slowly turn and sit down on the table, reading all the while. I’ll never know what it was that so caught his attention because the auditorium doors burst open just then, releasing students, teachers, hangers-on and camp followers of Mississippi River writing. For the next ten minutes I was passing out copies of riverrun to passersby, along with our writer’s guidelines and publishing schedule. Sales reps were distributing pre-publication copies of books, students were buttonholing authors, and everybody was exchanging business cards.