My dear friend Shorty, an MFA student at UMich, has just won first place in the 2009 Hopwood Awards for Short Fiction. He has also just performed his Master’s reading, where he read his short story “Kobe” for an audience of +100 people, of which the wyf & I & some other friends were part. Now, all the boy has to do to add MFA to his name is hand in his thesis (which is actually just 100 pages of solid material), and then figure out how to pronounce Shortymfa. I’m partial to the straight-forward & logical “Shorteemfa”, but he likes the more exotic & hyphenated “Short-yim-fay.” He would.

It was a great reading. If he happens to permit it, I’ll post the story here – it’s awesome. Plus the wyf & I (& even my sister) were PRESENT when a couple of the story’s elements were born, so we’re indirectly famous.

So glad we got to be here in Ann Arbor to a) see the reading; b) share the experience of winning the Hopwood Award with him & his family (Ed, Dee & Jen were all here too!); and c) totally extract some inspiration from the fact that the guy’s been cave-caged for 10 years and finally got recognized for his work. And now there’re even bigger possibilities opening up for him… which I can’t share here, but let’s just say he could break big and SOON. Couldn’t happen to a better guy.

Congrats, Shorty.

Also, Ann Arbor is FRIKKIN’ COLD.