Road Trip with Peter Dickinson

On my to do list for this week was to finish revising my paper for the ChLA conference next week. I'm notoriously bad about revising (generally cutting a 20 page paper into 8) at the last minute (plane ride to the conference, in the hotel the night before or morning of, etc). This year is different for a couple of reasons. 1) the conference is in Normal, so I can exactly edit while driving the 5 minutes to the conference. Not to mention the fact that since we are hosting, the time I would generally spend editing will likely be spent at the registration table. 2) The more important reason that I can't procrastinate this year is that I am presenting on Peter Dickinson's Eva, which is the winner of the Phoenix Award this year. Dickinson is coming to the conference, so this makes the pressure *slightly* higher.

In the midst of working on the paper, I also found out that there was an opportunity to travel with a professor who was returning Dickinson to O'Hare. I volunteered and made a mental note to then add "reading more Peter Dickinson" to my to do list. Last night I received an email that asked if I would be willing to drive Dickinson myself because of a timing conflict. Now I really must read more Dickinson before next week (or find someone to accompany me who has read more). Those of you have read more of his stuff, suggestions on where to start?

On a related note, I was really nervous about presenting on the work of an author who was going to be present for the conference. I had a very bad experience when I wrote to an author whose work was the subject of my thesis and she responded with a very nasty "you've missed the point entirely" and then proceeded to tell me that academics were ruining the art. Since the Phoenix Award is given to books that were not as well received when they were first published, but have since been highly regarded, I was a little leary of what I would find in the reviews of Eva and how Dickinson feels about critical discussions of his texts. Thankfully, I found the following letter on his website and now feel much better.

Back to reading and revising.