The Writer’s Desk: Pedagogy in Practice—Leveraging the Asynchronous Classroom
Join us for The Writer’s Desk: Pedagogy in Practice—Leveraging the Asynchronous Classroom, featuring educators Rebecca Bednarz and Johnny Damm, moderated by Travis Kurowski, AWP board chair and chair of the Professional Standards Committee. In “Leveraging the Asynchronous Classroom,” panelists will outline best practices for setting up the asynchronous model and discuss ways that the asynchronous environment produces a unique creative writing learning experience.
The premiere of this Writer’s Desk event will also include a live Q&A chat on AWP’s YouTube channel on Thursday, May 14, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. ET. This programming is free and available to all; however, to participate in the live Q&A chat, you must be signed in on YouTube.
Join us Thursday, May 14, at 6:00 p.m. ET for this free event.
Moderator Bio
Travis Kurowski is an associate professor of creative writing at York College of Pennsylvania and serves on the AWP Board of Directors as the Mid-Atlantic Council Chair. His edited books include Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine and Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century, with Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer. Current work includes the art project Dear You on Substack and a novel about AI, psychedelics, and wildfire.
Panelist Bios
Rebecca Bednarz is an editor, writer, and educator working at disciplinary intersections. A poet by training, she has guided editorial on prominent literary and scholarly works, major museum exhibitions and publications, public history projects, and advanced science and tech communications. She is the author of the chapbook Camera Obscura, and her poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review and Prairie Schooner. Bednarz is a visiting professor at Fitchburg State University, where she teaches graduate courses in creative writing, pedagogy, criticism, and creative practice.
Johnny Damm’s comics include “I’m a Cop”: Real-Life Horror Comics, which has been featured in The Washington Post, Boing Boing, and In These Times and twice named in The Comics Journal’s best comics of the year. Damm is also the author of the acclaimed graphic novels Failure Biographies and The Science of Things Familiar, both published by the Operating System. His comics, prose, and visual poetry have appeared in Guernica, Poetry, The Offing, and elsewhere. He teaches at San José State University.