2011 Schedule
Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday
| Saturday- February 5, 2011 | |
|---|---|
8:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. | |
Exhibit Hall C |
S100. Conference Registration. Attendees who have registered in advance may pick up their registration materials throughout the day at AWP’s Pre-Registered Check-In desk located in Exhibit Hall C of the Bookfair on the exhibition level of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Unpaid Registrant Check-In badges are available for purchase on the lobby level of the Marriott Wardman Park. |
8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. | |
Marriott Wardman Park, Exhibition Level |
S101. AWP Bookfair. With more than 500 exhibitors, the AWP Bookfair is one of the largest of its kind. A great way to meet authors, critics, and peers, the Bookfair also provides excellent opportunities to find information about many literary magazines, presses, and organizations. |
9:00 a.m.-5:45 a.m. | |
McKinley Room |
S102. Speak Peace: American Voices Respond to Vietnamese Children's Paintings Exhibit. This exhibit features original poems written by American children, veterans, and established poets in response to Vietnamese children’s paintings on peace and war collected over the last 10 years by the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. A collaborative, international project between Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center and School of Art Galleries, and Soldier’s Heart, a veterans’ return and healing organization, Speak Peace offers a timely testament to the emotional truth of war and peace. |
9:00 a.m.-10:15 p.m. | |
Coolidge Room |
S103. CantoMundo: Building a Community of Latina/o Poets. (Pablo Miguel Martinez, Deborah Paredez, Emmy Pérez, Cynthia Cruz, Eduardo C. Corral, Celeste Guzman Mendoza) CantoMundo, a master workshop and retreat, strives to cultivate a community of Latina/o poets by providing a culturally-grounded space for the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latina/o poetry. In this session, founders and fellows will reflect on launching the retreat-workshop and will discuss the significance of CantoMundo’s efforts to connect training in craft with a focus on Latina/o aesthetic and social concerns. The session will also feature a reading by panelists-fellows. |
Delaware Suite Room |
S104. Poetry of Resistance: Poets Take on Reasonable Suspicion (Arizona SB 1070). (Francisco X. Alarcón, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Odilia Galván-Rodríguez, Scott Maurer, Abel Salas, Hedy Garcia Trevino) In April 2010, in response to a controversial law in Arizona, a Facebook page, Poets Responding to SB 1070, was created. It is now a public forum for lively mixing of poetics and politics. Its poet moderators will discuss the political imagination of multicultural poetic expressions in support of a resurgent Civil Right Movement for comprehensive Immigration Reform. Come and see accomplished poets read some cutting edge poems posted on the FB page as well as from their acclaimed works. |
Harding Room |
S105. Best Practices for Submitting an AWP Panel Proposal. Come join AWP conference committee members and staff for a best practices discussion about submitting a panel proposal for the 2012 Conference & Bookfair in Chicago. Discussion will include an overview of the proposal system and tips for submitting a more effective proposal. |
Hoover Room |
S106. How Everybody is Doing Everything: Writing and Teaching in Art Schools. (Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Eric E Olson, Amy Lemmon, Lesley Jenike, Beth Concepción, Matt Donovan) Once thought of as places that only produced artists and designers, art schools increasingly have become places that teach writing and produce writers. Not just ateliers where poets and painters rub elbows, these institutions are laboratories of culture with their own pedagogies for teaching creativity, developing technical skills, and building critical communities. In this panel, we’ll explore how art and design, their programs, practices, and students, shape how we write and teach writing. |
Maryland Suite Room |
S107. When Should We Write For Free? (Jess Row, Robin Hemley, Stona Fitch, Nicole Walker) In a world of proliferating outlets for our writing, how do we distinguish between publishing for the love of art, and publishing for which we ought to be paid? Do literary journals, anthologies, and magazines (print and web) have an obligation to pay their contributors, even a minimal amount? Are informal kinds of writing (tweets, Facebook posts, blog entries) “content” we should be compensated for? Join this panel of writers, editors, and bloggers for a vigorous debate—all voices welcome. |
Nathan Hale Room |
S108. Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America. (Colleen McKee, Amanda Crowell Stiebel, Paula Kamen, Anita Darcel Taylor, Christine Simokaitis) In Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America, a collection of personal essays, women recount their often Sisyphean efforts to access and receive quality health care. They write with dark humor and brave candor about treatments for mental and physical illnesses that work, don’t work, and kind of work—that is, when they can afford them at all. In this panel, the co-editors join four contributors in reading from the acclaimed anthology. |
Thurgood Marshall East Room |
S109. Innovations, Migrations, and Translations: Contemporary Poetry in Tokyo. (Judy Halebsky, Kyong Mi Park, Yuka Tsukagoshi, Sawako Nakayasu, Holly Thompson, Mariko Nagai) Hear voices of innovation from the Tokyo poetry scene. This reading presents poetry, collaborations, and translations, from Tokyo based poets: Sawako Nakayasu, Kyong Mi Park, YU.K.a TsU.K.agoshi, Holly Thompson, Mariko Nagai, and Judy Halebsky. In different ways, these poets connect poetry in Japan with writers and readers transnationally. The reading is intended for an English speaking audience and includes two-voice bilingual poems and short readings in Japanese followed by English language translations. |
Thurgood Marshall North Room |
S110. In the Interest of Language: The Poet as Translator. (Olivia Sears, Wayne Miller, Valzhyna Mort, Idra Novey, Sidney Wade) To translate, one must engage with the original language, but also fully inhabit and interpret the mood, culture, and the voice of the writer. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that translation is the closest of close readings, and that such attention to the nuances of each word gives a poet new insight into the intricacies of language. The Center for the Art of Translation invites four premier poet/translators to explore how translation has informed their relationship with their own words. |
Thurgood Marshall South Room |
S111. Small Ships, Deep Ocean: Independent Presses Keep Short Story Collections Afloat. (Clifford Garstang, Mary Akers, Laura van den Berg, Jason Ockert, Jim Ruland, David Philip Mullins) Charting a course for your short story collection has never been trickier. From shrinking shelf space to nonexistent advances, disinterested trade publishers to increased competition for readers, more and more authors of story collections are turning to independent presses. Six salty veterans discuss the small press experience: platforms for approaching publishers, the challenges of promoting collections, and the advantages and disadvantages of small publishers in an uncertain economy. |
Virginia A Room |
S113. Low-Residency MFA Program Directors’ Caucus. (Stan Rubin, Bonnie Culver, Jennifer Stewart) This is a regular annual meeting of the directors of low-residency MFA Programs, providing a forum for discussions on program development and pedagogy particular to the low-residency model. All low-residency directors are welcome to attend and vote. |
Virginia B Room |
S114. (WITS ALLIANCE) Paths of Passion: WITS Links to University Teaching and Writing Careers. (Laura Long, Tiphanie Yanique, Cody Walker, Keya Mitra, Robert Fanning, Robin Davidson) A legacy is emerging as WITS teachers develop college-level teaching and writing careers. How does WITS experience help writers get jobs as professors, and then shape that teaching? How does it nurture one’s own writing? How does the WITS commitment to underserved students change the teacher, so art profoundly connects to pleasure, gift exchange, and political activism? The panelists are professors who have taught in diverse settings and write poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translation. |
Virginia C Room |
S115. Bangladeshi Fiction: A New Direction in South Asian Literature. (Ameena Meer, Gemini Wahhaj, Sharbari Ahmed, Jalal Alamgir, Javed Jahangir) Bangladeshi authors Monica Ali and Tahmima Anam have shaken the literary world by pointing to new directions in South Asian storytelling. This panel presents Bangladeshi writers and considers the exciting new possibilities in South Asian narrative. How is Bangladeshi fiction different? What are the defining elements of this new voice? The writers will read from their work and discuss the ways in which they redefine the South Asian landscape in their concept of audience, imagination, and politics. |
Wilson A, B, & C Room |
S116. Moving Pictures, Moving Words: Essays in the Digital Age. (Ned Stuckey-French, Marcia Aldrich, Rebecca Faery, Doug Hesse, Philip Metres, Wendy Sumner-Winter) This panel will examine the impact of the digital revolution on the essay. We will address the following questions: How are the new media changing the ways we write, read, and teach essays? What can essayists learn from poets, novelists, filmmakers, bloggers, web designers, and hackers about what the digital future may hold? What problems and possibilities do these new essays present to magazine editors, anthologists, and book publishers? |
Ambassador Ballroom |
S117. CLMP Panel—Editor as Mentor: Literary Magazines and Emerging Writers. (Rob Spillman, Hannah Tinti, C. Dale Young) Editors savvy in the ways of molding minds (in addition to manuscripts) from Tin House, One Story, and New England Review share stories about some of the relationships they’ve fostered and the writers they’ve nurtured, and what these mentorships have meant for their respective publications. |
Diplomat Ballroom |
S118. What To Expect When You’re Expecting Your First Book. (Alexi Zentner, Jill Bialosky, Téa Obreht, Noah Eaker, Peter Mountford, Adrienne Brodeur) Three debut novelists and their respective editors from Dial, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and W. W. Norton, will discuss what an author can expect, and more importantly, what an author should do, between the period of selling his or her book and the publication date. Topics will include mistakes to avoid, the editing process, what pre-publication marketing and publicity can be done by the author and what is handled by the house, and what the author should be working on in his or her own writing. |
Empire Ballroom |
S119. A Zephyr Press Poetry Reading with Bakhyt Kenjeev and Ouyang Jianghe. (Leora Zeitlin, Bakhyt Kenjeev, Jianghe Ouyang, J. Kates, Austin Woerner) To commemorate our 30th anniversary, Zephyr Press presents one of Russia’s foremost poets, and one of China’s, in a trilingual reading that will allow the audience to hear a broad sampling of their work. Kazakh-born Kenjeev has published twelve books; Ouyang is the author of numerous books and belongs to the group called Five Masters from Sichuan. Their literary translators will read the English versions, and briefly discuss the challenges of rendering the poems from Russian and Chinese. |
Executive Room |
S121. Promise of Spring or Cruelest Day? April 15 Deadline for MFA Application Decisions. (Wendell Mayo, Jim Clark, Judith Claire Mitchell, Brad Felver, Alison Balaskovits) This will be a frank discussion of advantages and disadvantages of the Council of Graduate Schools’ (CGS) April 15 resolution. Despite the so-called spirit of the resolution, abuses occur in MFA/PhD recruiting. The goal is to draft a request that AWP look at the issue and make a policy relevant to creative writing, and not simply one that is supposed to fit any graduate applicant in any academic program. |
Palladian Ballroom |
S122. Women Writers and Rejection: How to Get Published and Avoid the Slush Pile. (Kate Gale, Nancy Boutin, Ladette Randolph, Allison Joseph, Carrie Shipers) Women writers don’t submit enough; we’re too cautious and we take rejection too hard. This is a panel on how to toughen up and choose wisely. There is no match.com, no eharmony; it’s all up to you, baby. You can be as published as the boys, and we’re here to show you how. |
10:30 a.m.-11:45 a.m. | |
Coolidge Room |
S123. Women’s Caucus. (Lois Roma-Deeley, Patricia Smith, Cheryl Dumesnil, Anna George Meek, Amy King, Katherine Arnoldi) Where is the place for the women writer within AWP and within the greater literary community? The women’s caucus discusses this as well as continuing inequities in creative writing publication and literature. In addition, issues centering on cultural obstacles in the form of active oppression, stereotypes, lack of access to literary power structures, historical marginalization of women’s writing, issues and perspectives, and the diverse voices of women will be explored, along with networking opportunities. |
Delaware Suite Room |
S124. Lucille’s Gifts: A Tribute to Lucille Clifton, Poet and Teacher. (KC Culver, Michael S. Glaser, Theresa Sotto, Jayme McLellan, Lauri Watkins) This panel will pay tribute to Lucille Clifton, not only as an author of international importance, but also as mentor and colleague. Lucille enjoyed a long career sharing her light with faculty, undergraduates, and graduates. Participants will discuss her compelling presence, her teaching and writing methods, and her influence on us as students, teachers, and human beings. We will also explore how her aesthetic influenced us as writers. |
Harding Room |
S125. DC WritersCorps 16th-Anniversary Poetry Reading. (Kenneth Carroll, John Murillo, Reuben Jackson, Brian Gilmore, Jeanie Tietjen, Imani Tolliver) A reading featuring writers who taught in DC WritersCorps, a groundbreaking poets-in-the-community founded in 1994 by the NEA and AWP. This outreach program reached over 10,000 DC residents and engaged over 150 poets and writers. These writers worked in homeless shelters, soup kitchens, libraries, prisons, and public schools. DC WritersCorps created the nation’s first Youth Poetry Slam League, winning President Clinton’s Arts and Humanities Award for innovative use of literature to serve at-risk youth. While DC WritersCorps was very much a regional endeavor, many of the writers have gone on to national prominence as both writers and academics, including A. Van Jordan, Gary Lilley, Jeffrey McDaniel, and Brian Gilmore. |
Hoover Room |
S126. Ethics in the Application: Using Old and New Technologies to Create a Literary Community at the Two-Year Campus and Beyond. (Mary Lannon, Brian Baumgart, Matt Mauch, Sharon Coleman, Christina M. Rau, John Dermot Woods) Panelists who have taken up new technologies and tried out their effectiveness in bringing students, faculty, staff, and community members together to share all things literary, both on campus and virtually, will explain their challenges, successes, and work-in-progress. Wikis, blogs, weekly e-mail blasts, reading series, and Facebook sites are some of the strategies faculty will describe as they explain their efforts to build a literary culture on their two-year campuses. |
Marriott Ballroom |
S127. Seriously Funny. (David Kirby, Barbara Hamby, Albert Goldbarth, Mark Halliday, Jennifer Knox, Jason Bredle) Reading from a new anthology, Seriously Funny: Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything Else, published by the University of Georgia Press. Participants will read their own poems and those by other poets in the anthology and speak about the role of humor in serious poetry. |
Maryland Suite Room |
S128. Leaping Prose: Alternative Shapes for Approaching the Novel. (Peter Grandbois, Kazim Ali, Carol Moldaw, Carole Maso) In Leaping Poetry, Bly discusses how Latin American poetry moves between the conscious and unconscious. This panel seeks to reshape the novel through associative leaps at the level of the word, the image, the sentence, the paragraph—as opposed to the traditional, linear, cause-and-effect movement in fiction. In our interrogation of the novel form, we will examine how these leaps can be made and what can be gained by stepping outside the linear, the rational, and the binary in shaping the novel. |
Taft Room |
S129. AWP 2012 Chicago Conference & Bookfair Forum. Join the AWP 2012 Conference Chair, Jerod Santek, and AWP staff for an open forum to discuss topics of interest and relevance to AWP’s upcoming conference in Chicago. |
Thurgood Marshall East Room |
S130. [WITS Alliance] Camps: Artful Paths for Summer Income. (Paul Shaffer, Long Chu, Cecily Sailer, Megan McNamer, Janet Hurley) Writing outside the classroom takes us several easy steps toward helping students experience writing as fun, while also anchoring good writing habits during time off from school, and making parents happy. This heady cocktail can allow these tuition-based camps to more than pay their own way, by introducing a writing project and its creative programming in your area that can provide work for writers, and perhaps help launch a writers-in-the-schools program. |
Thurgood Marshall North Room |
S131. Virginia Tech MFA Faculty Reading. (Edward Falco, Fred D’Aguiar, Jeff Mann, Erika Meitner, Matthew Vollmer) Five members of the Virginia Tech MFA Program faculty will read selections of their writing. From the gay and Appalachian writings of Jeff Mann, to the culturally and politically diverse interests explored in the poetry of Erika Meitner and Bob Hicok, to the multi-genre work of Fred D’Aguiar and Ed Falco, the five readers on this panel represent a variety of cultural, political, and aesthetic approaches to fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. |
Thurgood Marshall South Room |
S132. Fiction and the Literary Publisher: Milkweed Editions. (Ben Barnhart, Matthew Eck, Kira Henehan, J.C. Hallman, John Reimringer, Eric Gansworth) With over thirty years of publishing, Milkweed Editions has gained a reputation amongst independent presses for publishing award-winning fiction—from Larry Watson’s Montana 1948, to Seth Kantner’s Ordinary Wolves and David Rhodes’s Driftless—that is both aesthetically ambitious and successful in the marketplace. This event features five fiction writers new to Milkweed Editions reading from their work, and discussing the publication process with the Publisher. |
Thurgood Marshall West Room |
S133. Indigenous Rematriation through Reading & Speaking Poetry. (Susan Deer Cloud, Monty Campbell, Jr., Linda Hogan, Black Bear LaBoueff, Paul Hapenny, Stephanie Elliott) This panel, comprised of Indian people published in the Native anthology I Was Indian (Before Being Indian Was Cool), will read poems from the anthology and talk about firing poetry and pottery with their hearts and hands. Is it possible for such firing to rematriate living indigenous people and recreate a noncolonized land, interior and exterior? How is such creating of ceremony? How do our words, written and spoken, fulfill our responsibility to the next seven generations to come? |
Virginia A Room |
S134. The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project. (Anna Evans, Kim Bridgford, Erica Dawson, Jehanne Dubrow, Kathrine Varnes) In March 2010 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Kim Bridgford launched the Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project, an online database of essays about women poets and their work. The Timeline Project aspires to become a comprehensive resource of women poets, spanning all periods, countries, and schools of poetry. This panel will discuss the need for, and importance of the timeline, along with its ongoing development, such as handling copyright issues and contributing essays. |
Virginia B Room |
S135. The Southampton Review’s 5th Anniversary Reading. (Robert Reeves, Ursula Hegi, Matthew Klam, Roger Rosenblatt, Julie Sheehan, Helen Simonson) Five years ago, a range of talented emerging and established voices began appearing alongside visual artists in the handsome pages of a new magazine, the Southampton Review. Published by the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, TSR has already earned a reputation for outstanding creative nonfiction. Join a representative group of TSR contributors, with a nod to those in the DC area, for a sampling of personal essay, fiction, poetry, and memoir. |
Virginia C Room |
S136. Finding and Creating Online Teaching Opportunities—and Sustaining and Succeeding in Them. (Erika Dreifus, Sage Cohen, Andrew Gray, Michael Morse, Chloé Yelena Miller, Scott Warnock) More than one in four college/university students now take at least one course online. While some writers teach in college and graduate writing programs, others have established their own independent course offerings, or teach through private organizations. Our panelists represent a range of professional experiences in online teaching, in prose and poetry, for-credit and not-for-credit. They will share strategies for finding (and creating) work and succeeding as online writing instructors. |
Wilson A, B, & C Room |
S137. Teaching At-Risk Teen Writers. (Susanna Horng, Maya Nussbaum, Maria Theresa Romano, Nancy Larson Shapiro, Mary Roma, Tara Betts) This panel, composed of veteran mentors & leaders of Girls Write Now, an organization of professional women writers mentoring NYC high school girls since 1998, examines the challenges & joys of nurturing at-risk teen writers. Through their unique, intergenerational community model—mutually exciting for students and teachers—panelists share GWN’s pedagogical approach, multi-genre curriculum, developmental portfolios, and writing exercises applicable to a range of populations and skill levels. |
Ambassador Ballroom |
S138. The 1960 National Book Award Revisited: What Makes Fiction Last? (Peter Grimes, Steve Almond, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Brock Clarke, Michael Griffith, Jodee Stanley) What values in fiction endure? In 2010, we formed a committee of fiction writers and looked back fifty years to rejudge the 1960 National Book Award. We read, haggled, named a winner, and each of us wrote an essay—to take up arms for a favorite, reassess the year’s anointed books, reflect on the ebb and flow of reputation, explore the politics of awards. This panel will ask, What do we value most highly in fiction, and what gets cast aside by the way we define “ambition”? |
Diplomat Ballroom |
S139. Reconsidering the Experiment. (Steven Coughlin, Traci O Connor, Richard Sonnenmoser, Kim Dana Kupperman, Kathryn Nuernberger) We have lost track of what it means to be experimental. The prose poem is over one hundred years old, flash fiction and the lyric essay are comfortably familiar, and even language poetry is a well-established genre. These modes dominate our conversations about experiments in literature. But with so many writers partaking in these forms, it has become increasingly difficult to see them as anything but conventional. Quarter After Eight, a journal of innovative writing, proposes a panel of editors and writers that examines the current and future directions of experimental writing, and considers ways to put the experiment back into experimental writing. |
Empire Ballroom |
S140. The Poetry-Prose Dynamic, Internationally. (Carrie Etter, Toi Derricotte, Molly Peacock, Tim Liardet, Jill Bialosky) In this panel, five authors, residing in the U.K., Canada, and the U.S., investigate the interrelationships between their poetry and their prose, addressing such issues as the place(s) of memoir, shared elements such as simile and fact, the writer’s identity, and questions of form. What can we learn by examining the interfaces among the various genres we write? How do the different ways cross-genre authorship is perceived in the U.K., Canada, and the US affect identities and careers? |
Executive Room |
S141. Translation/Trans-Latino: Writing Across the Borders. (Daniel Borzutzky, Mónica de la Torre, Valerie Martinez, Urayoán Noel, Lila Zemborain) For many reasons, it has become common to place Spanish-language writing from Latin America in a separate category from English-language U.S. Latino writing. While we recognize the context and importance of this split, this panel seeks to start a new dialogue about writers who skillfully navigate both categories. In the process, we will discuss how a multi-lingual, multi-national “Trans-Latino” vision has shaped our writing, translating, editing, and teaching in productive and challenging ways. |
Palladian Ballroom |
S142. Making Peace with the Pen: How Teenage Boys Assert the Writer Within. (Stacy Leigh, Dave Johnson, Gregory Pardlo, Roger Sedarat) Many teen writing workshops include boys—quiet, eyeing the door, plotting escape. Why do many young men struggle to declare themselves as writers? What weighs down teenage boys from marginalized communities seeking creative community? Male writers who made the decision to write as teenagers share insights gained as students, teachers, and mentors, on messages and methods to help teenage boys embrace creative community. |
Regency Ballroom |
S143. A Conversation with Richard Bausch. (Jennifer Haigh, Richard Bausch) A candid conversation between friends: acclaimed teacher and award-winning novelist and short story writer Richard Bausch, and his former student, novelist Jennifer Haigh. |
Noon.-1:15 p.m. | |
Coolidge Room |
S144. More Than a Foot in the Door: Benefits of the Creative Writing Internship. (Barrett Bowlin, Christine Gelineau, Philip Brady, Stephanie G’Schwind, Jon Tribble, Sarah C. Harwell) As jobs in publishing and editing dwindle, having prior experience in these fields becomes invaluable. In this panel, editors and internship coordinators will speak about the benefits of offering creative writing internships to undergraduate and graduate students for course credit. Representatives from BOA Editions, Etruscan Press, Crab Orchard Review, Colorado Review, and Harpur Palate will be available to offer insight and answer questions regarding their internship programs. |
Delaware Suite Room |
S145. Poetry as Multimedia Documentary. (Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, Kwame Dawes, Erika Meitner, Natasha Trethewey, Ted Genoways) Can poets use the tools of journalism and other media to produce new models of storytelling? Poets reporting from communities in crisis (Jamaica, Haiti, Troy, Detroit, and Gulfport) gather to debate the possibilities of poetry as documentary and discuss their collaborations with radio producers and photographers. Part reading and part discussion, the panel puts into conversation writers whose work blurs the lines between art and journalism through text, photography, audio, and video. |
Harding Room |
S147. Town and Gown: MFA Programs in Partnership with Local Communities. (Joyce Peseroff, Steven Cramer, Sonya Larson, Jonathan Papas, Janet Pocorobba) MFA programs can act as a resource for communities by creating affiliations with libraries, community centers, and other local organizations. The panel will discuss projects developed between one MFA program and the Boston Public Library and the Denney Community Center; a low-residency program’s support of internships through their interdisciplinary requirement; and the writer’s organization Grub Street’s use of student interns and volunteers to bring creative writing to underserved communities. |
Hoover Room |
S148. Teaching the Nontraditional Writer: Practical Techniques for Teaching Students Outside the Mainstream. (Andrew Zornoza, Robert Lopez, Margaret Fiore, Elise Juska) Narrative, character, metaphor, dramatic tension: many of the traditional points of “craft” can be easily shown to the student-writer already steeped in the literature of the western canon. But how do we teach writing to students who’ve taken a different path into our classrooms? This panel offers practical tips and strategies in teaching artists, ESL students, and other nontraditional writers who may lack the confidence and/or knowledge to feel empowered. |
Marriott Ballroom |
S149. America Reimagined: Four Contemporary Voices, Sponsored by Blue Flower Arts. (Alison Granucci, Jennifer Egan, Joshua Ferris, Rick Moody, Benjamin Percy) America finds itself recast, stretched, and redefined though the astute minds of Egan, Ferris, Moody, and Percy. Each explores an eerie version of America through the eyes of their characters: a reanimated crawling hand, an ill man who cannot stop walking, a former punk rock star, and a father-and-son trip down a devilish canyon. These refreshing and surprising writers go straight to the jugular of modern life and bring us stories in which one cannot always tell the hero from the villain. |
Maryland Suite Room |
S150. A Reading by Five Points Writers. (Megan Sexton, David Bottoms, Kim Addonizio, Celia Dovell Bell, Elizabeth Spires) Five Points has continued to foster and support the work of established and emerging writers for nearly fifteen years. Come hear award-winning writers who have been featured in Five Points over the years read from their work. |
Nathan Hale Room |
S151. The Myth of Relevance. (Pauls Toutonghi, Tom Bissell, Danielle Evans, Vu Tran, Erin Ergenbright, Peyton Marshall) The use of topical themes in fiction can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, a strong writer should be able to make almost any scene interesting and vivid—writing about current events bears a certain weight of responsibility. Fiction depends on the artful surprise; if the substance of a story is cut from the headlines it risks straying into the territory of the familiar. Where should a writer draw the line? What is dangerous and what is inspiration? |
Taft Room |
S153. 2010/2011 Writers’ Conferences & Centers Meeting. An opportunity for members of Writers’ Conferences & Centers to meet one another and the staff of AWP to discuss issues pertinent to building a strong community of WC&C programs. |
Thurgood Marshall East Room |
S154. The T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize: A 15th-Anniversary Reading. (William Baer, Mona Lisa Saloy, Victoria Brockmeier, Carol V. Davis, Dean Rader, Christopher Bakken) The T. S. Eliot Prize has emerged as one of the most distinguished poetry book awards in the U.S. Known for its high-profile judges such as Dana Gioia, Naomi Shihab Nye, X.J. Kennedy, Alberto Rios, and Mary Oliver, the Prize continually recognizes a diversity of voices, themes, and aesthetics in both beginning and established poets. Administered by Truman State University Press in Eliot’s home state of Missouri and endorsed by Eliot’s widow, this is a celebration of prize-winning collections. |
Thurgood Marshall North Room |
S155. Warring Worlds: Developing Creative Writing Courses for Veterans. (Charlotte Gullick, Brian Turner, Chris Leche) This panel will discuss the power and importance of broadening access to creative writing courses for veterans and their families and communities. Discussion will include cross-curriculum approaches to engaging veterans, as well as address issues of creating opportunities for honoring veterans through the arts, such as reading from their own works. These types of courses will lay the foundation for student success throughout their degree programs. |
Thurgood Marshall South Room |
S156. Tribute to Orchises Press. (Terri Witek, David Kirby, Lia Purpura, John Poch, Barbara Hamby) Five poets who are beneficiaries of Roger Lathbury’s care and attention will pay tribute to Orchises Press then read an Orchises poem each. Together we represent a range of the press’s generosities, from its long championing of David Kirby’s work to the recovery of an out-of-print Barbara Hamby classic, to multi-book support of emerging poets John Poch and Terri Witek, to the launch of the skyrocket that is Lia Purpura, we all have something to say in appreciative description of the press and its publisher. |
Thurgood Marshall West Room |
S157. Diversity in a Diverse Writing Community: One MFA Program’s Experience. (Michele Wallace, Camille Wanliss Ortiz, Lyn Di Iorio, Carolyn Ferrell) How do the faculty and students at the City College of New York, CUNY’s MFA program, address issues of race in and out of the classroom, in their writing, and as part of their teaching pedagogy? Does it make a difference to teach and study writing in Harlem? Does the history, culture, and influence of Harlem and New York City impact the MFA experience? |
Virginia A Room |
S158. From the Page to the Small Screen: What the Information Age Means for Us . (Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, Terry Hummer, Maggie Dietz, Mary Flinn, Brian Brodeur, Keith Montesano) As digital technologies such as blogs, online periodicals, hypertext, and phone Apps gain legitimacy, more writing than ever before finds its home online. Some big questions loom: What is lost or gained when we translate our work from the page to the screen? Are these technologies promotional tools or new creative forms? Are we witnessing the death of the page or its evolution? Panelists from Slate, Blackbird, the Favorite Poem Project, AmeriCamera, and the blogosphere will answer these questions. |
Virginia B Room |
S159. The Asian American Writers’ Workshop 20th-Anniversary Reading. (Ken Chen, Kimiko Hahn, Patrick Rosal, Jennifer Tseng, Marie Lee, Ed Lin) Over the past twenty years, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop has grown from a Greek diner meeting into a preeminent intellectual sanctuary for Asian American literature. Join us for a cross-genre, cross-generational reading celebrating the Workshop’s twentieth year. Writers will read from their work and talk about the Workshop’s influence and history. |
Virginia C Room |
S160. A Voice of Her Own: A Reading. (Reese Okyong Kwon, Alexander Chee, Tiphanie Yanique, Marie MutsU.K.i Mockett, Hasanthika Sirisena) This reading presents writers who have given fictional voice to women from patriarchal societies. What are the joys and responsibilities of creating characters from women who traditionally have had fewer opportunities to speak for themselves? Drawing from their experiences with and research into Japanese, Iranian, Caribbean, Korean, Sri Lankan, and historical French communities, both native and expatriate, six writers will read and discuss passages featuring the women they have made. |
Wilson A, B, & C Room |
S161. Writing Plays with Poetry: The Place of Verse Drama in Contemporary Literature and Theatre. (Sarah Kain Gutowski, John Barr, John Surowiecki, David Yezzi, Stephen Young) After a brief discussion of verse drama written in the 20th century, we will reflect on the work of writers who create in the genre today, and efforts like those of the Poetry Foundation to encourage and support plays written in verse. At the heart of the conversation we’ll discuss why a writer might compose a play with poetry, and the advantages and disadvantages of the genre. Also, we’ll consider verse drama not just on the page but on the stage, and whether it has a place in theatre today. |
Ambassador Ballroom |
S162. Transformative Dialogues Between Writers of Color. (Alexs Pate, Quincy Troupe, David Mura, M. Evelina Galang) This panel will examine the dialogues taking place now between writers and communities of color. How do writers foster interventions and exchanges between people of color? How are we influenced by each other’s works and traditions? What are the necessary critiques and interventions that need to be made in this area? In what ways do such exchanges alter our view of history and the present? The panelists will use their own work and experience in such dialogues to explore these questions. |
Diplomat Ballroom |
S163. The Intimate Detail. (Carole Burns, Alice McDermott, Mary Kay Zuravleff) The importance of the telling detail in depicting a character, place, or situation is a given, and yet, how does it work? How does a small, insignificant detail encapsulate the so much larger, more ephemeral whole that writers are trying to bring to life? We will look at several types of details—details used to depict appearance or place, to create scenes, and to evoke a character’s memories—and try to pull apart how the intimate detail reveals so much. |
Empire Ballroom |
S164A. University of Maryland MFA Faculty Reading. (Michael Collier, Maud Casey, Merrill Feitell, Howard Norman, Stanley Plumly, Joshua Weiner) Readings by the University of Maryland MFA Faculty: Maud Casey, Michael Collier, Merrill Feitell, Howard Norman, Stanley Plumly, and Joshua Weiner. |
Executive Room |
S164B. Teaching Queer Writing: Workshops to Watch Out For. (Andrea Lawlor, Samuel R. Delany, Eileen Myles, Ian Sherman, Morgan Lynn, Sara Jaffe) What does it mean to teach queer writing? Are we teaching craft, creating community, or both? What’s the best way to teach queer writing (whatever it is)? In what ways might queer writing pedagogy inform all of our teaching practices? This panel of writers who teach will share strategies and ideas based on their experiences teaching undergraduates, graduate students, and in the LGBTI community. |
Palladian Ballroom |
S165A. Washington Journalists Turned Fictionalists. (Tim Wendel, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Sarah Pekkanen) What happens when Washington-based newswriters and reporters turn to fiction? Will the result tend to be more popular than literary, more commercial than artistic? How do they find the time, often while balancing deadline work? Several prominent journalists-turned-fictionalists answer these and other questions, while reflecting upon how their newsgathering experiences influence their fiction. |
Regency Ballroom |
S165B. The PSA Presents: A Reading and Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera. (Robert N. Casper, Juan Felipe Herrera) National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Juan Felipe Herrera will read his poetry, followed by an interview with Poetry Society of America Programs Director Robert N. Casper. |
1:30 p.m.-2:45 p.m. | |
Coolidge Room |
S166. The Craft of Historical Fiction. (Robin Oliveira, Anna Keesey, John Pipkin, Kelly O’Conner McNees) An exploration of the craft of historical fiction by the debut authors Robin Oliveira, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Kelly O’Connor McNees, John Pipkin, and Anna Keesey. They are the authors of, respectively, My Name is Mary Sutter, Wench, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, Woodsburner, and Little Century. We will delve into the role of imagination, the use of fictional versus real characters, the incorporation of research, and the commitment of the author to real events. |
Delaware Suite Room |
S167. Like It’s Still Going On: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Reading & Discussion. (Sally Dawidoff, Frank Bidart, Vijay Seshadri, Kevin Young) The Civil War is the single most consequential event in the history of our country, and the single most resonant. Even now, it preoccupies American poets. The panelists will read from their work and discuss the fraught lineage into which they have placed themselves. |
Harding Room |
S168. Getting to the Core: Creative Writing as a Core Requirement in College Curricula. (Chad Davidson, Gregory Fraser, Randy Hendricks, Thomas Hynes, Stephanie Vanderslice) The inclusion of creative writing classes in the core requirements of college curricula promises major benefits to writing programs. The road to the core, however, may be fraught with dangers. What will your department think? What about other departments that may feel threatened by the popularity of creative writing? What challenges will upper administrators face? How can you both serve the institution and further your program goals? This panel seeks to address these key questions and concerns. |
Hoover Room |
S169. Beyond Deliverance—Writing Place and People of Appalachia. (Janet Bland, Bev Hogue, Nathan Anderson, Tim Catalano) Once an early gateway for western expansion and symbolic of American progress and adventure, Appalachia’s portrayal today, in both literature and imagination, is often that of dead end roads, dangerous coal mines, and backwards people. Reconsidering a renewed geographical narrative, these transplanted writers explore the profound impact of Appalachian history and culture on meaning, identity, and the creative process. |
Marriott Ballroom |
S170. Undivided: Poet as Public Citizen, Sponsored by Split This Rock Poetry Festival. (Melissa Tuckey, Toi Derricotte, Martín Espada, Carolyn Forché, Mark Nowak) Split This Rock celebrates poetry of provocation and witness and the role of poet as public citizen. In a time of multiple wars, economic, social, and environmental crises, this panel will discuss the role of poets and poetry in public life. Shelley described the poet as “unacknowledged legislator.” What does this mean in the age of Fox News and corporate lobbyists? What are some of the ways that poets are engaging with the larger public in the United States and abroad? Who are the models for this work? How might we begin to think of ourselves as undivided: both citizen and poet? |
Maryland Suite Room |
S171. What We Love; What Editors Are After. (Rob Spillman, Fiona McCrae, H. Emerson Blake, Denise Oswald, Andrew Leland, Daniel Slager) Six distinguished magazine and book editors speak candidly about what they love and what makes it to the top of the mountain of manuscripts. Editors from the Believer, Graywolf Press, Milkweed Editions, Orion, Soft Skull Press, and Tin House offer concrete examples and anecdotes of writing that works for them, as well as advice on how to build a long-term mutually fulfilling writer-editor relationship. |
Nathan Hale Room |
S172. As Long As People Write: Training and Supporting New Writing Teachers. (Sarah Harris, Crystal Fodrey, Ben Ristow) Richard Hugo said that as long as people write, there will be writing teachers. Today many programs listed in the AWP Guide name the opportunity to teach as a selling point—yet few offer training in the teaching of creative writing. Most graduate students are instead trained through composition theory. We will present the results of research on this training process, and recommend ways programs can support those who desire more connection between their writing lives and the courses they teach. |
Thurgood Marshall East Room |
S174. Lyric Poetry and the Archive. (Tung-Hui Hu, Brenda Hillman, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Brent Armendinger, Cody Walker, Megan Pugh) If, as Pound famously wrote, an epic poem is a poem containing history, what does it mean to write lyric poetry inspired by the archive? How do poets use archival or historical documents in their craft? On this panel, six poets examine their relationship to a diverse array of archives containing cartographic maps, voicemail messages, oral histories, and other ephemera, suggesting that lyric poetry can itself function as a sort of archive. |
Thurgood Marshall North Room |
S175. Kin: Mixed-Genre of Color. (Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Linda Hogan, Deborah A. Miranda, Ching-In Chen, Nancy Agabian, vaimoana litia makakaufaki niumeitolu) Artistic traditions of color precede, intersect with, and inform European forms, but too often are ignored in discussions of the avant-garde. This is especially unfortunate when we see the long traditions and volume of work being produced that buck against, exist outside of, and hybridize Eurocentric conventions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and theater. Europeans are not the only innovators, and what mixed-genre writers of color produce is both highly crafted and highly traditional. |
Thurgood Marshall South Room |
S176. Caribbean Diaspora and Diegesis: Cristina Garcia and Irene Vilar. (Fred Arroyo, Cristina Garcia, Irene Vilar) Cristina Garcia, prizewinning Cuban American novelist and editor of two Vintage Latino literature anthologies, and Irene Vilar, controversial nonfiction writer from Puerto Rico and editor of The Americas book series, combine brief readings from their works and discuss the Latino Caribbean Diaspora as it continues to find expression in new literary narratives. Moderated by Fred Arroyo. |
Thurgood Marshall West Room |
S177. The Road Less Traveled: How to be a Writer Without a Full-time Academic Gig. (Cheryl Strayed, Steve Almond, Amy Holman, Ru Freeman, Christian TeBordo, Marisa de los Santos) The path to solvency and security for most writers is to pair writing with full-time jobs in academia. On this panel, six authors will talk about their lives as writers without the de facto college teaching gig. Panelists will discuss the range of ways they’ve supported themselves, the reasons they’ve chosen the paths they have, and also the liberations and constraints they’ve experienced as writers outside the writer-faculty track that’s so deeply embedded in what it means to be a writer today. |
Virginia A Room |
S178. Four by Four: Beltway Poetry Quarterly Celebrates the Poetic Lineage of the Capitol City. (Holly Bass, Regie Cabico, Brian Gilmore, Kim Roberts, Dan Vera) We honor four African American poets, active from the 1920s to the 1990s, who helped build and sustain the literary community in Washington, DC, and whose influence continues to inspire: Sterling Brown, Essex Hemphill, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and May Miller. Each historic writer is paired with a contemporary DC writer. Sponsored by Beltway Poetry Quarterly, publishing and documenting DC writers online for over ten years. |
Virginia B Room |
S179. Counterpoint / Solf Skill Press Reading. (Jack Shoemaker, Skip Horack, Andrew Altschul, Jane Vandenburgh, Richard Wirick, Janice Shapiro) Counterpoint / Soft Skull Press is an author-driven house with a clear presence on both the West and East coasts and two rosters of award-winning authors working in every genre. Please join us in celebrating our combined successes with readings by current outstanding authors—Skip Horack, Andrew Altschul, Jane Vandenburgh, Richard Wirick, and Janice Shapiro—marking the beginnings of a new indie era. |
Virginia C Room |
S180. [WITS Alliance]—We Were All Poets in the 3rd Grade: What Happened? (Jack McBride, Janine Joseph, Mary Rechner, Giuseppe Taurino, Jeanine Walker) WITS Writers will discuss their paths as writers and teachers, from when they fell in love with writing, how they were discouraged or made to feel anxious about the process, and how they subsequently came back to it. Investigating why K-12 students go from a willingness to engage creative writing (and all it entails: vulnerability, creativity, risk) to being afraid or indifferent, panelists will explore best teaching practices for re-engaging students and collaborating with classroom teachers. |
Wilson A, B, & C Room |
S181. Face-to-Face Communities in the Age of Facebook. (Curtis Bauer, Elaine Sexton, Oliver de la Paz, Camille Dungy, Ross Gay) At the beginning of the 21st century, can we thumb our noses at technology-based communities in the hope to save traditional methods of community building? Without rejecting technology, this panel will inform attendees how to benefit from both technological resources and different nontechnological approaches to starting, establishing, and growing communities in diverse literary contexts, including reading series, anthologies, writing collectives, small presses, and race-based organizations. |
Ambassador Ballroom |
S182. New American Writing 40th-Anniversary Reading. (Maxine Chernoff, Bin Ramke, Gillian Conoley, Rusty Morrison, Paul Hoover Room, Julie Carr) The distinguished literary magazine New American Writing will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2011. Established in 1971 as a saddle-stitched quarterly called OINK!, it has become one of the premier literary periodicals of our time. Some of the magazine’s leading contributors will read from their work. |
Diplomat Ballroom |
S183. The Way We See DC: African American Writers’ Riffs on Living in the Nation’s Capital. (Kermit Frazier, Breena Clarke, Eric May, E. Ethelbert Miller) African American writers, native Washingtonians, or those strongly connected in other ways to Washington, DC, read from their fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, capturing aspects of the spirit of black people’s lives in the Nation’s Capital in ways that remind us why many folks have often called it their Chocolate City. |
Empire Ballroom |
S184. Change or Die: How Established Print Journals are Adapting to Life on the Internet. (Amber Withycombe, Speer Morgan, Christina Thompson, Tyler Meier, Andrew Ciotola) As models for publishing an economically viable literary journal evolve, the magazines that shaped small press publishing during the last century are learning to adapt by printing slimmer issues, moving original work online, and emphasizing social networking. Such practices are common for newer magazines, but few established journals have made the change. Editors from Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, Missouri Review, West Branch, and Witness discuss how they are re-imagining their magazines online. |
Executive Room |
S185. AAUP and Writers and Teachers and AWP. (William Nevins, Robert Kreiser) This forum will provide information for AWP members and others about the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and provide suggestions on how the AAUP and AWP may increase cooperation and mutual support, to the benefit of all our members, especially those who are teachers. AAUP is a long established Washington DC-headquartered national organization defending creative expression and academic freedoms, and advocating improved working conditions for faculty and improved college governance. |
Palladian Ballroom |
S186A. Writers on Mentors and Literary Friendships. (Jayne Anne Phillips, Tom Grimes, Elizabeth Benedict, Alexander Chee, John McIntyre, Michael Dirda) Jayne Anne Phillips, speaking on publisher/mentor Seymour Lawrence, joins Tom Grimes, author of Mentor, a Memoir (on writing and his Iowa mentor, Frank Conroy); Elizabeth Benedict, editor of Mentors, Muses, Monsters, 30 Writers on People Who Changed Their Lives; Alexander Chee, author of Annie Dillard and The Writing Life; John McIntyre, RN MFA Capote fellow and editor of Memorable Days (letters of James Salter and Robert Phelps); and Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning book columnist, discuss the lasting influence of shared literary mentors and publishers, the value of literary letters, and the importance of the mentor/apprentice relationship. |
Regency Ballroom |
S186B. Carpetbagging for Poetry. (Stuart Dischell, Mark Cox, Alan Shapiro, Thomas Lux, Joseph Millar) A Reading by Six Northern poets—Mark Cox, Stuart Dischell, Dorianne Laux, Thomas Lux, Joseph Millar, and Alan Shapiro—who live, write, and teach in the South. |
3:00 p.m.-4:15 p.m. | |
Coolidge Room |
S187. Behind the Brown Wall: Chicana and Chicano Voices Rise Up. (Richard Yañez, Eduardo C. Corral, Carolina Monsiváis, Paul Pedroza, Michelle Otero) A reading by authors who declare the U.S.-México Border a part of their creative identity. The poetry, stories, novels, and essays of these respected Chicana and Chicano voices are rooted on both sides of the international boundary. In their publications, the borderlands symbolize a portrait of America’s boundaries more complex than sensationalized headlines of drug smuggling and illegal immigration. Come witness these talented writers and poets who celebrate people more than mere politics. |
Delaware Suite Room |
S188. Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience. (Jon Parrish Peede, Andrew Carroll, Brian Turner) The panel will include a short film, literary readings, and discussion about writing by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts created the Operation Homecoming program to help U.S. troops and their families write about their wartime experiences. Through this program, distinguished novelists, poets, and journalists conducted workshops at military installations across the world. Brian Turner and Andrew Carroll will discuss their roles in the project, and recent war veterans will read from the Operation Homecoming anthology (Random House/University of Chicago). Free educational materials will be distributed. |
Harding Room |
S189. Linking It Up: Working with Story Cycles, Linked Collections, and Novels-in-Stories. (Anne Sanow, Cathy Day, Clifford Garstang, Dylan Landis) You have characters who appear in more than one story, or several stories set in one place—and you don’t want to write a traditional novel. What are the possibilities? This panel examines the different ways that stories can be linked together to create groups of stories or an entire book. We will focus on strategic craft decisions related to character, setting, point of view, and narrative arc, and discuss how best to determine the completed structure and form of your project. |
Hoover Room |
S190. The Youth Voice Amplified: Poetry and Social Justice in the Classroom and Community. (Quraysh Ali Lansana, Georgia A. Popoff, Jackie Warren-Moore, Avery R. Young, Nandi Comer) Are today’s youth too focused on pop culture? empowered to make change? Are adults listening? This panel of skilled teaching artists will lead a roundtable discussion on political/social expression through poetry/spoken word, sharing approaches to teaching in schools, detention centers, and community. Panelists offer unique experiences, ranging from third grade persona poetry workshops to teaching a high school class while having to duck and cover from gunfire. Open to all writers and educators. |
Marriott Ballroom |
S191. Graywolf Press Reading. (Jeffrey Shotts, Nick Flynn, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Stephen Elliott, Jessica Francis Kane, Elizabeth Alexander) Five writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction read from their recent books published by one of the best literary publishers in the country, Graywolf Press. Introduced by Graywolf Publisher Fiona McCrae. |
Maryland Suite Room |
S192. A Celebration of Carnegie Mellon University Press Poetry. (John Hoppenthaler, Cornelius Eady, James Harms, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Jerry Williams, Michael Waters) Founded in 1972, Carnegie Mellon University Press (CMUP) has produced well over 200 collections, including books by Pulitzer Prize winners Rita Dove and Stephen Dunn. It is difficult to overstate CMUP’s dedication to supporting and advancing the literature of our time; the press has produced as many books as money will allow each year, striving to keep CMUP open to new voices. This reading will feature six poets who have found in CMUP a home for his or her poetry, and the purpose of this panel is to sing of it. |
Thurgood Marshall East Room |
S193. Elizabeth Bishop Birthday Celebration. (Joelle Biele, Jonathan Galassi, Jeffrey Harrison, Lloyd Schwartz, Jane Shore, Sarah Vap) At the centenary of her birth, we remember Elizabeth Bishop and celebrate her work with the release of three new books, expanded editions of her collected poetry and prose and her forty-year correspondence with the New Yorker. This intensely private woman wrote some of the best-loved poems of the 20th century and is a major figure in American letters. This panel will offer personal stories, readings, and critical assessments of Bishop’s literary achievements and wide-ranging influence. |
Thurgood Marshall North Room |
S194. A Writer’s Relationship to Their Literary Influences in the Process of Making or Hindering a Poet. (Philip Terman, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Anne Marie Macari, Tyehimba Jess, Patricia Clark) Every poem is a new metaphor, says Robert Frost, and yet each poem is rooted in a tradition larger than the poet or the poems we create. But Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence claims that poetic influence hinders creativity and produces weakness. Have our literary relatives or ancestors harmed us, or have they strengthened the poetry we create? This panel of poets from diverse backgrounds will explore our connection to unique literary ancestries, and how that connection makes us the poets we are. |
Thurgood Marshall South Room |
S195. Founding Women: Publishers and Editors from across the Literary Journal Landscape. (Jennifer S. Flescher, Brigid Hughes, Rebecca Wolff, Jennifer Barber, Beth Harrison, Rebecca Morgan Frank) Katharine Graham, former publisher of the Washington Post, said to love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything be more fun? In this panel, six female publishers from a range of media and generations will discuss their own literary matters: the process of creating and sustaining their successful literary ventures. Panelists will discuss the gender politics of publishing and explore the strides the literary landscape has made and the struggles we still grapple with. |
Virginia A Room |
S196. Signs of Writers: American Sign Language and English Bilingualism as a Resource for Authors. (Paige Franklin, Christopher Heuer, Jane Nickerson, Sharon Pajka, Tonya Stremlau) “Deaf gain,” a term coined by D. Bauman and J. Murray, provides a frame to discuss the positive contributions of the Deaf community to human diversity (as opposed to the negative frame of the term “hearing loss”). For writers, this means seeing the Deaf community’s dual use of American Sign Language and English as a resource. This event considers pedagogical approaches for encouraging writers to exploit this advantage for poetry, fiction, multimedia blogging, and scriptwriting. |
Virginia B Room |
S197. Faith vs. the Avant-Garde: Spirituality and Innovation in Contemporary American Poetry. (G.C. Waldrep, Kazim Ali, Bhanu Kapil, Catherine Imbriglio) To what extent is spiritual commitment compatible or incompatible with a poetics variously described as innovative, experimental, or avant-garde? To frame it the opposite way, mustn’t any poetry of spirituality be, on some level, “experimental”? Four poets and cross-genre writers from four distinct spiritual traditions discuss the relationship between faith, practice, and poetic innovation in their and others’ works. |
Virginia C Room |
S198. What Are You Wearing?: Exploring the Emerging Genre of Fashion Writing. (Molly Prosser, Amber Oakley, Julia DiNardo, Sadie Stein, Jonathan Hesser) For years, fashion writing has been perceived as a pretentious, insiders-only realm. Now, with reality TV and the blogosphere taking on fashion, everyone has something to say. Writers and editors from ModCloth, Jezebel, Fashion Pulse Daily, and Zappos Development sit down to discuss the craft and teaching of fashion writing, establishing a voice in the contentious style world, how best to apply an MFA to a career in fashion writing, and the challenges the woman-dominated field faces. |
Wilson A, B, & C Room |
S199. Remembering Jack Myers. (Mark Cox, Ralph Angel, Gillian Conoley, Bret Lott, Tim Seibles, Richard Jackson) Friends, colleagues, and students honor the late Jack Myers. Seamus Heaney, who selected Myers’s work for the 1985 National Poetry Series, describes his poetry as wise in the pretense of just fooling around. Myers’s contributions range from widely used anthologies and textbooks to a dictionary of poetic terms—eighteen books in all. A final volume, The Memory of Water, is expected early 2011. |
Ambassador Ballroom |
S200. Blackened Alphabet: 20 Years of Affrilachian Poetry. (Parneshia Jones, Ricardo Nazario-Colon, Mitchell Douglas, Kelly Ellis, Paul Taylor, Frank X Walker) When the Affrilachian Poets formed at the University of Kentucky in 1991, publications in seminal poetry anthologies and first books followed. Twenty years later, the cycle is repeating and a new wave of Affrilachian books is making an impact on the national literary landscape. This reading will assemble five founders of the Affrilachian Poets to share their work and ponder the group’s future. |
Diplomat Ballroom |
S201. Shaping a Life: Voice, Structure, and Craft in Memoir. (Janice Gary, E. Ethelbert Miller, Ben Yagoda, Dustin Beall Smith, Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, Michael Downs) While fiction writers create entire worlds from scratch, those working in the nonfiction genre of memoir must struggle with the bulky material of an existing life. Like a sculptor working with a block of stone, the memoirist’s task is to shape and reveal, fashioning a well-formed text out of a lifetime of experiences. In this session, writers of memoir will discuss the challenges of the form including where to begin, structure and voice, material selection, and other craft considerations. |
Empire Ballroom |
S202. Translating Poets Alive. (Mariela Dreyfus, Yusef Komunyakaa, Raúl Zurita, Valerie Mejer, Anna Deeny) This session aims to discuss the advantages and particulars of translating a poet alive. It includes a translation from English into Spanish (Valerie Mejer translating Yusef Koumanyakaa) and another one from Spanish into English (Anna Deeny translating Raúl Zurita). Topics covered include author’s input in translating his own work, literal and literary choices when translating, and bridging North and South through translation. A bilingual poetry reading will follow. |
Executive Room |
S203. UVa Young Writers Workshop: A 30th-Anniversary Celebration. (Liz Ahl, Gregory Orr, Mary Szybist, Donald Platt, Dana Roeser, Margo Figgins) For thirty summers, YWW has taught high schoolers the art and craft of poetry, fiction, songwriting, nonfiction, and playwriting. Our teachers and alumni have published widely and have taught in high schools, universities, prisons, and elsewhere. We’ve performed Greek dramas to military communities across the U.S., have established writing workshops in our local used bookstore, and have auto-tuned the news on the Rachel Maddow Show. Come hear what happened to us at YWW and what we’re up to next. |
Palladian Ballroom |
S204. A Reading and Conversation with Carole Maso, presented by VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. (Susan Steinberg, Carole Maso) Carol Maso is a groundbreaking novelist and essayist, whose poetic and postmodern narratives have enlarged the scope of American prose. She is the author of five works of fiction, including, most recently, Defiance (a novel) and Aureole (short fiction), as well as collections of essays and criticism. Currently a professor of English at Brown University, she is the recipient of many awards, among them a Lannan Fellowship and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Maso will read from her work followed by a conversation with writer Susan Steinberg. |
Regency Ballroom |
S205. How a Poem Happens: Five Poets Explore How Their Poems Were Made. (Brian Brodeur, Bob Hicok, Dorianne Laux, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Eric Pankey, Adrian Blevins) Each of the five poets on this panel will explore the making of one of their poems from genesis to publication. Each poet, who has been featured on the popular weblog How a Poem Happens, will discuss their own process of poetic composition, addressing the following questions: How was this poem initiated? How did it arrive at its final form? Were any principles of technique consciously employed? What is American about this poem? Was it finished or abandoned? For more information, please visit the blog. |
4:30 p.m.-5:45 p.m. | |
Coolidge Room |
S206. Write Your Way: Teaching Writing in Nonschool Settings. (Victoria Sammartino, Mimi Acosta, Kamilah Moon, Sheila Maldonado) This presentation will be geared towards writers who are currently teaching or are interested in teaching writing in nonschool settings, including correctional facilities, juvenile detention centers, therapeutic communities, and group homes. Everyone who attends this presentation will walk away with tangible tools for introducing people in alternative and transitional settings to the craft of writing. There will be ample time made to answer specific questions from people currently teaching. |
Delaware Suite Room |
S207. Copyright Law Basics for Authors. (John McKay, Chris Mohr) Understanding the basics of copyright law allows writers to protect what is theirs and respect what is not. It allows writers to make more knowledgeable decisions about proposed contracts, and whether or how to use things that don’t originate with them—from facts or ideas to text, photos, and lyrics. Be informed about concepts like fair use, public domain, work for hire, notice, registration, derivative works—it’s more than just a good idea … it’s the law. |
Harding Room |
S208. All Booked Up—How to Create a Festival. (William Miller, Kara Oakleaf, Sarah Browning, Nancy Coble Damon, Caitlin Hill) The DC area is rich in literary culture, and this has led to the creation of a variety of high-quality regional book festivals. The experts behind five such events will give you a behind-the-scenes look at how each festival works; from how they secure funding and choose their authors, to how they market to the public and how the festivals complement each other and collaborate. There will be ample time for Q&A so you can learn how to create the same quality literary events in your community. |
Hoover Room |
S209. Creative Online. (Yvette Christiansë, Li Yun Alvarado, Amanda M. Calderón, Melissa Castillo-Garsow, Bronwen Durocher) What possibilities lie in the malleability of the Internet and its multi-directional readability? As the future of fiction becomes increasingly influenced by blogs, social networking, and multimedia, writers seek ways to merge questions of craft with the technological demands of web-based platforms and their potential for instant feedback and editing. Four writers will present cutting edge web-based fiction writing projects and discuss their work and process in the context of these questions. |
Maryland Suite Room |
S210. What Goes On: A Tribute to the Mind and Poetry of Stephen Dunn. (Laura McCullough, Kurt Brown, Andrea Hollander Budy, Kathleen Graber, BJ Ward, Peter Murphy) Stephen Dunn is a poet’s poet, a philosopher, who, to quote Robert Bringhurst in defining poetry, “think[s] intensely and beautifully.” Reflecting on Dunn’s What Goes On: Selected and New Poems and his newest book, Here and Now, this tribute will examine Dunn’s influence and the affect of his oeuvre as a poet who explores, as Eluard said, “the world within this one.” It will be followed by a reading by Dunn. |
Thurgood Marshall North Room |
S211. Native Writing: A New Generation, New Conversation. (Toni Jensen, Santee Frazier, Sy Hoahwah, Tacey Atsitty, Layli Long Soldier, Orlando White) This panel brings together new Native writers whose work is featured in a recent special issue of the Florida Review. Their work is diverse in its tribal, geographic, and aesthetic makeup, and marks a shift toward a new generation of Native writing. This panel examines this shift: how these new writers see their work in relation to existing Native writing, how this new Native writing fits with other ethnic writing, and how it fits within the broader community of American literature. |
Thurgood Marshall South Room |
S212. Doing It All—? (Ann Fisher-Wirth, Aliki Barnstone, Nicole Cooley, Annie Finch, Cynthia Hogue) Five women who write and publish both poetry and academic prose, and who also hold significant administrative responsibilities, read briefly and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of this triple commitment. How do you do it all? More importantly, why do you do it all? Is this a gendered issue? Does it signify an inability to extricate oneself from others’ demands and expectations? Does it stem from feminist or other ethical convictions? Is it fructive for health, happiness, poetry? |
Thurgood Marshall East Room |
S213. Outsiders Writing the Outside: A Reading of Wilderness Poetry by Women, Queer, and Minority Writers. (Keetje Kuipers, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, G.E. Patterson, Paisley Rekdal, Brian Teare, Ross Gay) While poets from Walt Whitman to Mary Oliver have shown that the pastoral is not an experience limited to the poetic adventurings of straight white men, wilderness writing is still a frontier dominated by our colonial forefathers. But many women, queer, and minority writers are beginning to wield the chainsaw that cuts that line on the page. As more of us leave the garden and go off-road, new poetic exploration occurs. Come hear these award-winning “outsiders” read their wilderness poetry. |
Thurgood Marshall West Room |
S214. Story, Telling: Innovative Poetic Narratives. (Kathleen Ossip, Jennifer Moxley, Kate Greenstreet, Dawn Lundy Martin, Peter Covino, Susan Briante) Narrative, particularly autobiographical narrative, is one of the enduring pleasures/sources of poetry. These days, more and more poets are using nontraditional and documentary strategies to enact the lived life in long poems and book-length sequences. Six poets who have explored the new poetic narrative in recent books will talk about their methods and the techniques they’ve developed—oblique and blunt, factual and lyrical—to allow their stories to emerge. |
Virginia A Room |
S215. Post-Katrina Poetry: Five Years Later. (Robin Kemp, Kalamu ya Salaam, Peter Cooley, Julie Kane) Hurricane Katrina unleashed a storm of questions: who gets to speak for whom, who is “disaster-surfing,” and who is a New Orleanian? Noted New Orleans-based poets reflect on poetry as a weapon against cultural homogenization. Topics include a critical overview of post-Katrina poetry by natives and non-natives; the landmark “Still Standing” reading; the difficulties of post-Katrina publishing; and the damage that Washington’s inadequate response is wreaking on the New Orleans poetry community. |
Virginia B Room |
S216. Small Press Publishing as Pedagogy. (Elizabeth Robinson, Laura Moriarty, Charles Alexander, Jane Sprague, Sasha Steensen) Participants in this roundtable include writers and teachers with extensive experience doing small press publishing. Each will offer a perspective on how small press publications function ideally as pedagogical tools. Discussion will center around the ways small press books enhance the aesthetic and cultural diversity of contemporary literature, offer alternatives to mainstream texts, and provide a model for students on how to start their own publishing ventures. |
Virginia C Room |
S217. In the Clefts of the Rock: Translating Erotic-Religious Poetry. (Sheri Allen, Betty De Shong Meador, Willis Barnstone, Sholeh Wolpé, Hélène Cardona, Tony Barnstone) Sexuality and religion are generally regarded as separate and antagonistic realms in the Anglo-American cultural landscape. But they can be intimately engaged in poetry that emerges from other cultures around the world. What strategies do contemporary translators use to bring about the balance between the spiritual and the sexual in religious-erotic poetry? We will hear and discuss recent English-language translations from an eclectic range of poetries, from ancient Sumer to modern Iran. |
Wilson A, B, & C Room |
S218. LaChiPo and the New Latino Poetics/Politics. (John-Michael Rivera, Rodrigo Toscano, Valerie Martinez, Roberto Tejada, Danielle Cadena Deulen, Carmen Giménez Smith) LaChiPo, an online forum for the Latino Diaspora, is the Latino’s 21st-century answer to “new” movements like flarf and conceptual poetics. Devoted to developing Latino letters, LaChiPo invites AWP attendees to resituate how they read, to relearn how identity is spoken, expanding their articulation of history, art and modernity. LaChiPo presents writers discussing Latino conceptions of internet community, identity and the avant-garde, reading individual and their collective poetry works. |
Ambassador Ballroom |
S219. A 45th-Anniversary Reading by the Alumni of the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. (Terry Kennedy, Kelly Cherry, Keith Lee Morris, Dan Albergotti, Jillian Weise, Drew Perry) One of the oldest such programs in the country, the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro celebrates its 45th anniversary with a reading by our award-winning alumni. |
Diplomat Ballroom |
S220. Unembarrassed Poetry. (James Cihlar, Kristin Naca, Brenda Shaughnessy, Richard Siken, Alex Lemon) “The Truth must dazzle gradually,” Emily Dickinson warned. Poetics have historically embraced a variety of dictums. But many contemporary writers blow past the boundaries of aesthetic camps, unselfconsciously pulling methods from experimental, lyrical, and narrative traditions in service to the individual poem. As abstractions and language productively crash, pure utterances emerge. This reading celebrates poets whose work lays out the truth raw, even in the midst of beautiful wreckage. |
Empire Ballroom |
S221. Beyond the Workshop: Revising, Revamping, Rejecting the Workshop Model. (Margaret Lazarus Dean, Charles Baxter, Liam Callanan, Valerie Laken, Patrick O’Keeffe) For many teachers, the workshop is the default mode of creative writing pedagogy. Many of us have had to defend the method from criticisms (e.g. that a workshop constitutes the blind leading the blind), yet even those of us most dedicated to the workshop have experienced problems or doubts. This panel will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the workshop as traditionally imagined, its underlying assumptions and possible limitations, and alternative approaches to the writing classroom. |
Executive Room |
S222. The Unfolding Story: Narrative Possibilities in Creative Nonfiction. (Steven Harvey, Joe Mackall, Jocelyn Bartkevicius, Bob Cowser, Michael Steinberg) Stories emerge in works of creative nonfiction in a variety of ways. Sometimes they are told in a straightforward manner, but often they are truncated, muted, or implied—and each choice has consequences. What are the possibilities for storytelling available to the writer of nonfiction? What effects do these choices create? Does the genre place any limits on narrative possibilities? A panel of writers and editors will examine these questions about the tales we tell in creative nonfiction. |
Palladian Ballroom |
S223. By Heart: The Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest. (Stephen Young, Ron Smith, Mimi Herman, Sarah Bainter Cunningham) Conceived at AWP in 2004 by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, the Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest has grown from a two-city pilot to a program that last year involved 325,000 students from all fifty states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. Representatives from the co-sponsors, along with a student, teacher, and organizer discuss the contest, its impact on high school poetry instruction in the US, and how to participate. |
Regency Ballroom |
S224. Celebrating 50 Years of Freedom to Write Advocacy. (Larry Siems, Major Jackson, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Azar Nafisi) Freedom to Write, PEN American Center’s flagship program, is celebrating fifty years of working to defend free expression globally. Several PEN members—Major Jackson, Joanne Leedom Ackerman, and Azar Nafisi—and PEN’s director of Freedom to Write, Larry Siems, will offer an hour of readings and discussion related to PEN’s advocacy work. They will touch upon PEN’s recent activities in China, Russia, and Iran, as well as PEN’s work against book-banning and for reader privacy in the U.S. |
8:30 p.m.-10:00 p.m. | |
Marriott Ballroom |
S225. A Reading and Conversation with Amy Hempel and Gary Shteyngart, Sponsored by The George Washington University. (Amy Hempel, Gary Shtengart) Amy Hempel is a recipient of awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the United States Artists Foundation, and the Academy of Arts and Letters. Her Collected Stories was named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times, and won the Ambassador Book Award for best fiction of the year. She teaches at Harvard University and Bennington College. Gary Shteyngart’s first novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His second novel, Absurdistan, was a national bestseller. He was named to both Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and the New Yorker’s Top 20 Writers Under 40 in 2010. Following the reading, the authors will participate in a live conversation with novelist and critic Thomas Mallon. |
Regency Ballroom |
S226. A Reading and Conversation with Kay Ryan, Sponsored by the Library of Congress. (Kay Ryan, Dana Gioia) Out of Kay Ryan's intensely compressed lines emerges a surprising wit, brilliance, and musicality. Her poetry, having been compared to intricate Joseph Cornell boxes, and to Marianne Moore's writing, has won the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and NEA. In 2006, Ryan was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and in 2008, was named the sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress. Ryan will read from her work, followed by a conversation with poet Dana Gioia. Introductions by John Y. Cole, director, Center for the Book, Library of Congress. |
10:00 p.m.-Midnight | |
Thurgood Marshall |
S227. Party to Benefit AWP! For a donation of $50, this special pass admits you to two special dance parties on Friday and Saturday nights of the Conference, featuring DJ Neza, dancing, and free drinks. Part of your donation will underwrite AWP’s services on behalf of members, including its Job List, its national advocacy efforts, and its work to ensure small classes, better pay, and more financial aid for faculty and students. Do a good thing and have fun in the process! Tickets may be purchased at both the Unpaid Registrant Check-In Area and at the door. |
Virginia B Room |
S228. The All Collegiate Afterhours Slam. (Jim Warner, Philip Brady) The All Collegiate Afterhours Slam is open to all undergrad and grad students attending the conference. Participation is capped at ten slammers a night. Slam pieces must be no longer than three minutes in length. Prizes, judges, and organization of event will be handled by Wilkes University Creative Writing Program and Etruscan Press. Limited open mic to follow the slam (time permitting). Come visit the Wilkes University /Etruscan Press booth to register. |
