S220.

In Praise of Praise: Do Young Writers Need Encouragement Now More Than Ever?

Rooms 347-348, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
Saturday, March 11, 2023
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm

 

Young writers entering the literary community are doing so during an extraordinary time. A global pandemic. The threat of a world war. Random acts of violence. Deeply entrenched political and social tribalism. The anxieties are too many to list. Is praise a way to keep students engaged in their work? How much encouragement is too much encouragement, and when does it become artificial? This panel will explore the concept of praise and how it can be a valuable tool in a time of great uncertainty.



Outline & Supplemental Documents

Event Outline: AWP_Panel_IN_PRAISE_OF_PRAISE.pdf

Participants

Moderator:

Luke Rolfes teaches creative writing at Northwest Missouri State University and coedits Laurel Review. His books include the forthcoming Sleep Lake (novel), Impossible Naked Life (flash/short fiction), and Flyover Country (short fiction). He has mentored in the AWP Writer to Writer Program.

Bronson Lemer (he/him) is the author of The Last Deployment: How a Gay, Hammer-Swinging Twentysomething Survived a Year in Iraq. His work has appeared in Guernica, Creative Nonfiction, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at the University of Minnesota Rochester.

Rebekah Jerabek is a writing instructor at The University of Texas at El Paso, where she has been teaching for more than seven years. She holds an MFA in creative writing and a bachelor's degree in English. Her creative work has been published in the Texas Review Press: The Gordian Review.

Teague von Bohlen is an associate professor of fiction at the University of Colorado Denver, where he serves as fiction editor for the literary magazine Copper Nickel. He's a literary journalist for Westword, and his latest book is Flatland, a collection of flash fiction and photography.

John Gallaher is the author of two chapbooks and five books of poetry, most recently, In a Landscape (2014), as well as coeditor of The Akron Series in Poetics, The Laurel Review, and Time Is A Toy: The Selected Poems of Michael Benedikt.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center