After years of attending AWP (the Associated Writing Programs' annual conference--Brits, imagine 11,000 writers in one U.S. city for three days) and thereby obtaining my American lit and food fix, I decided to take a break this year. It proved to be fortuitous, as I was suffering from a flu for the first time in years, and a bad one at that. It was only when I spoke to Lesley Wheeler that I began to feel sorry I'd missed it. She told me people were talking about hexes, spell