An old-timey microphone and the words AWP Podcast Series

Podcast Series

The AWP Podcast Series features recordings from our annual conference. Members can listen to podcasts episode by episode right here on AWP’s website.

Podcast episodes from the 2007 conference and select episodes from 2013 onward are available to the public for listening. All other episodes are available only to AWP members. Check in often for new releases!

AWP podcast episodes and recordings are copyright of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. For more information, please visit our terms of use. Some podcast episodes may contain adult language or situations. The views and opinions expressed in these recordings may not necessarily reflect the views of AWP’s staff, Board of Directors, or members.

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  • | March 9, 2023

    Episode 178: #AWP23 Deema Shehabi

    Poetry “carr[ies] the most human of voices” for Deema Shehabi, a Palestinian-American writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology and Kenyon Review. Shehabi earned her undergraduate degree in History and International Relations from Tufts University and Master’s in Journalism from Boston University, previously served as the vice president of the Radius of Arab American Writers, and has received four Pushcart prize nominations. She is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and Diaspo/Renga, the latter of which she co-wrote with Marilyn Hacker. In this episode, Shehabi shares how Diaspo/Renga emerged out of four years of email correspondence with Hacker. Together, we celebrate the collection as a testament to the “private humanity” between its two poets. Shehabi also speaks to the homes she’s found in Palestine, Kuwait, and California and the “perpetual expansion and contraction” that accompanies exile and return in her life. In negotiating this state of flux in her relationship with language, Shehabi talks about the burden of translation and always having to “teach people how to read” when she writes. Finally, Shehabi gifts us a striking reading of her poem, “Tracery of Dune and Chamomile,” which is modeled after Marie Howe and gazes upon the truth of humanity and intersections.

    Published Date: January 17, 2024
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  • | March 10, 2023

    Episode 175: #AWP23 Matt Bell

    Matt Bell is an author, English professor, and editor. He currently teaches creative writing at Arizona State University. In this episode live from the conference floor at AWP 2023, we’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of his indispensable book on the craft of writing, Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts. We also discuss his dystopian novel, Appleseed, and and his admiration for climate writing that restores hope for humanity. Listen to the full episode to find out what Bell means when he advocates for ‘radical revising’ and his mission to conceptualize revision as a process that can transform a draft into a novel, rather than an assignment needed to be completed for school. We also discuss his dreamy ten-plus-year relationship working with Soho Press (shout out to the indie stalwarts!), and some of the advice he gives to his students: 1) allow readers space to figure out things for themselves, 2) experiment with non-traditional writing structures, and 3) work through tangly writing problems together. Finally, Bell ends this episode with advice for gaining inspiration for your next work and the unfortunate discovery that you can learn what your agent truly thinks of you through their editorial notes (writer beware!).

    Published Date: December 14, 2023
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  • | March 10, 2023

    Episode 176: #AWP23 Maha Ahmed

    Exploring the specificities of a diaspora while also calling upon ancestral experiences is just one of the many threads Maha Ahmed weaves through her poetry. Like many members of diasporic communities, Maha’s experiences as an Egyptian American do not always resemble the grossly generalized “immigrant story.” We had the opportunity to chat with Maha about writing herself out of this pigeonhole, as well as how she experiences life as a student, scholar, and poet. She received her MFA at the University of Oregon, and is now a literature and creative writing PhD candidate at the University of Houston (Go Coogs!). She specializes in colonial Egypt, Arab-American diasporic literature, and Arabic to English translation. We talked with her about Rusted Radishes, a Beirut-based literary magazine, and the big-city-but-small-world way she was offered the position as its poetry editor. We dive deep into the US-centric and profoundly skewed notion that immigrants’ stories only matter once they land on US soil. It is exactly for that reason, Maha insists, people of the diaspora can acknowledge ancestral ties to a place even when it may feel uncomfortable to do so with a hyphenated or dual identity.

    Published Date: December 7, 2023
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  • | March 10, 2023

    Episode 174: #AWP23 Kristen Millares Young

    Kristen Millares Young calls her novel Subduction “a study of recurrently going meta,” or “an examination of the longing that we have to be in contact with others who are not like us.” From exploring the notion of consent–not just sexually but also culturally–to the difficulty of the transmission of knowledge and the burden of whiteness, this novel plumbs the depths of the human consciousness. Kristen is a prize-winning journalist and essayist who regularly writes essays, book reviews, and investigations for The Washington Post, The Guardian, Literary Hub, and much more. Her recent novel Subduction, published by Red Hen Press, was named a staff pick by The Paris Review, called “whip-smart” by The Washington Post, was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and won the Nautilus and Independent Publisher Book awards. We had the privilege of speaking with Kristen about Subduction, including her writing process, how her journalism informs her work as a fiction writer, and her appreciation for Red Hen Press. We also learned about the importance of cultivating a strong professional relationship with an editor and how building trust with them can allow a writer to push for what they believe in.

    Published Date: November 30, 2023
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  • | March 10, 2023

    Episode 182: #AWP23 Guadalupe Garcia McCall

    Guadalupe Garcia McCall is an author, poet, and educator who has been noted as a “leading voice in Chicana and Latina children’s and young adult literature.” She received her B.A. in Theatre and English from Sul Ross State University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. She is a recipient of the 2012 Pura Belpré Medal and currently teaches young writers in the MFA program at Antioch University. In this episode, in collaboration with Bloomsday intern Elena Welsh, a lover and scholar of YA, we talk about McCall’s mission to reach young people who did not see themselves in literature growing up and to represent the Hispanic community’s “mamas, tios, and tias.” McCall also discusses the differences between publishing with the Big Five and independent publishers and how each choice affects growth and the longevity of her books. Further, McCall emphasizes her role and experience as an educator in her creative and publication processes, and how essential her interaction with educators and librarians in schools is to her work. McCall stresses the care it takes to find the right translator for her work, to ensure that the Spanish language “sounds true” to her Hispanic readers. And finally, excitingly, McCall tells all about her most recent work, a collaboration with David Bowles’, Secret of the Moon Conch (Bloomsbury, 2023). Tune in to here more about the inspiration behind and the process by which she wrote this time-traveling love story. P.S. We talk about a haunted house Garcia McCall and Bowles visited to inspire the sense of place in The Secret of the Moon Conch. Who doesn’t love a good ghost story?

    Published Date: November 23, 2023
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  • | March 10, 2023

    Episode 181: #AWP23 Enzo Silon Surin

    Enzo Silon Surin writes, composes, and publishes artifacts on the “witness continuum”—art that he says “pays homage to the culture in which it was formed” and the necessity of generational change. Surin’s work spans librettos commissioned by the Boston Opera Collaborative, four poetry collections, and a musical-in-the-making. He also founded Central Square Press, an independent publisher of works that “reflect a commitment to social justice in regards to African-American, Caribbean, and Caribbean-American communities.” We had the pleasure of chatting with Surin about how he came to writing as means of documentation—from intuitively producing plays and operas about his childhood in Queens to developing his 10-minute play, “Last Train” (which has a forthcoming operatic adaptation). We discussed the juxtaposition of violence and tenderness in his collection, When My Body Was A Clinched Fist, winner of the 21st Annual Massachusetts Book Awards. Between witnessing the coup that forced Surin from Haiti and the “social violence” he saw in New York, he says he grew up in “state of violence.” It was by becoming a “clinched fist” that Surin says he protected his innate compassion and resilience. Finally, Surin celebrates how writing “saved [his] life” and speaks from the corner of publishing he’s forged, where he’s found that real-life audiences hungry for quality work “already exist."

    Published Date: November 16, 2023
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  • | March 10, 2023

    Episode 173: #AWP23 V.V. Ganeshanathan

    V.V. Ganeshananthan is an author, poet, and journalist, whose works have been featured in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota as a McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor of English. Ganeshananthan also co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast with Whitney Terrell, which explores writers and literature as mouthpieces for our cultural landscape. In this episode, we talk about Ganeshananthan’s 18-year-long writing process for her latest novel. Ganeshananthan maps her journey with Brotherless Night, from “bluffing her way into” a novella class during her own time as an MFA student to her techniques for “fielding facial expressions” of doubt over the novel’s completion. We revel in our common ground in the literary ecosystem, with Bloomsday poet Jabari Asim and Kate and Jessica’s longtime mentor, Michael Knight, both appearing on the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast. While fondly recounting how MFA writers at the University of Minnesota experiment in “speed-dating” to “workshop the workshop,” Ganeshananthan reflects on the value of an MFA program that isn’t genre-siloed and the living body of work that speaks to writers of color. Finally, while celebrating the release of Brotherless Night and asking what’s next for Ganeshananthan’s writing, we try to “remember how to start things.”

    Published Date: November 7, 2023
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  • | March 10, 2023

    Episode 179: #AWP23 Chelsea Kern

    As Program Director of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), Chelsea Kern is the glue that holds so much of the indie literary world together, advocating for mission-driven independent publishers and magazines—and, with equal importance, introducing readers to the work this community produces. It is clear from our conversation, she has a passion for seeing big projects through to completion. We discussed the constant that is CLMP and how the literary landscape has transformed since the organization’s founding in 1967—becoming increasingly global and digital. CLMP, with Chelsea’s leadership, has taken these changes in stride with webinars, newsletters (that Bloomsday archives for reference religiously), and a listserv for magazines and presses to ask and answer each other’s questions. As a proud member of CLMP, we can confirm that this listserv is one of the crown jewels/hidden gems of the organization, which always saves us from having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to oddly specific publishing questions Google doesn’t have the answer to. We also explored Chelsea’s personal journey, from a CLMP fellow working in Diversity & Inclusion to Program Director. A go-between who works to connect us needy presses with the grant gods themselves, she has spearheaded vital programs like the Literary Arts Emergency Fund. Chelsea could be considered literary royalty, but she is a magnanimous monarch. We are grateful to have shared space with her in this episode.

    Published Date: November 2, 2023
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  • | March 10, 2023

    Episode 180: #AWP23 Alyson Sinclair

    Does Alyson Sinclair sleep? We had to keep asking ourselves as we chatted it up with Alyson from the floor of AWP (Association of Writing and Writing Program)’s Conference and Bookfair. She’s done it all when it comes to the writing world—bouncing between the bureaucracy of big-four publishers—um, she sent faxes to Seamus Heaney?—to the hustle and bustle world (emphasis on the hustle) of independent presses. Currently, Alyson is the Owner/Publisher at The Rumpus and founder of Nectar Literary, a boutique publicity and communications firm for authors, independent presses, and literary organizations of all ilk. Making literary community might just be the crux of our conversation. After learning that hunker-down-and-drink-tea-all-day-with-page-turny-manuscripts editorial roles are not the default at an eye-opening internship, she turned to publicity. Connecting authors to the broader writing ecosystem thrilled her. Publicity and pitching media, in Alyson’s eyes, is a fascinating form of problem solving. Her insight comes from a wide range of experiences in all corners of our ecosystem, spanning from soliciting advertising at a magazine, to setting off individually in the convoluted publishing universe, to coexisting with other literary collectives that share the same mission. Let’s just say—both before and after soaking in this conversation—Bloomsday is a certified Alyson Sinclair fangirl.

    Published Date: October 26, 2023
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  • Seattle, Washington | March 10, 2023

    Episode 177: #AWP23 Neema Avashia

    Neema Avaisha is an author and a public school civics and history teacher in Boston. She was born and raised in southern West Virginia to Indian immigrant parents. Her first book, Another Appalachia: Coming up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Town, explores her early life and development in Appalachia and was published with West Virginia University Press. It was a finalist for the 2022 New England Book Award and won for Book Riot’s 2022 Best LGBTQ+ Memoir. In this episode, we talk about Avashia’s unique position as writer of a queer memoir that depicts one person’s experience and the clear understanding that she’s not a representative for all of queer Appalachia. Given all that, she says was still surprised at the “emotionally resonant” reception she received. We discuss Avashia’s self-given imperative to reinject nuance and depth into the existing narrative and sociopolitical climate. She sets herself the goal of continuously asking “why?” throughout her work and aims to create a relationship with her reader that allows space for exploration and discourages a rush for easy answers. We got to chat about her unconventional route to publication with WVU (hooray for indies!), what book tour for a memoir is like when your audience seemingly already knows your personal life, and the joy of finding a publisher with shared geographic roots. Check out her book and the various outlets for which she rights about education, LGBTQ and BIPOC issues, and motherhood.

    Published Date: March 10, 2023
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  • Virtual Conference | March 7, 2021

    Episode 172: #AWP21 Day 4, Episode 2

    Amanda Niehaus has a PhD in Physiological Ecology. She is the author of numerous award-winning short stories, essays, and an acclaimed novel, The Breeding Season (Allen & Unwin, 2019). As part of her author profile (bestill our science-loving hearts) she writes: “Does science belong in literary fiction? As a scientist, I never thought so. But fiction connects with readers, enabling them to empathise with imagined lives. So what better way to communicate?” She was studying a unique marsupial species where the male invests so much into their reproduction that they only survive one breeding season. The metaphor was just too rich. That’s when she started writing The Breeding Season. What began as an award-winning short story eventually evolved into a novel—which was completely outside Amanda’s comfort zone. But as both she and Jess agree, you just have to trick yourself by writing it piece by piece. Check out the full episode as we discuss this, and many other traits of scientists-turned-writers, as well as the organization she founded with author, Jessica White, called Science Write Now, a publishing platform and community-based forum for creative writing about science. Honorable Mentions: Author, Lidia Yuknavitch Author, Alice Sebold Author, Krissy Kneen

    Published Date: February 3, 2023
    Duration: 00:27:51
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  • Virtual Conference | March 7, 2021

    Episode 172: #AWP21 Day 4, Episode 1

    Corraling the myriad ways Sumita Chakraborty’s poetry collection gets at the heart of grief all but flummoxed me. Its meaning is still washing over me. But I’ll say that poet Rishi Dastidar did what I couldnt do when she wrote that it’s “a book to hold close, an amulet that transmutes the intensities of grief into something uplifting, the attempt to keep hold of wonder.” We are thrilled to get to talk to her today about this luminous debut collection and many other things, if we’re lucky. We were surprised to hear that Sumita’s introduction to creative writing and literary studies was in college. In her 13 years at AGNI Magazine, she worked in many capacities, eventually serving as poetry editor. It was in these positions that became accustomed to every angle of poetry publication before venturing in as poet herself. Sumita’s time at AGNI provided her this comforting(?) insight: no matter how talented and brilliant you are, your poems might still be rejected because of reasons beyond your control. We talk about her decision to publish her collection Arrow with Alice James Books, what it means to be a “sad girl poet” trying to be a “happy girl poet,” and how to honor and dismantle grief while somehow still managing to be playful. (Spoiler alert: she does it!) Honorable Mentions: Poet, Lucy Brach Breido Rachel Mennies’s The Naomi Letters from BOA Cortney Lamar Charleston’s Doppelgangbanger from Haymarket Taylor Johnson’s Inheritance from Alice James Books Alice Oswald’s Nobody from W.W. Norton and Company Bridget Kelly’s Song from BOA Lucille Clifton’s The Book of Light from Copper Canyon Press

    Published Date: February 3, 2023
    Duration: 00:27:53
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  • Virtual Conference | March 5, 2021

    Episode 170: #AWP21 Day 3, Episode 3

    Vanessa Garcia is a Miami-based novelist, playwright, journalist, and visual artist. Much of her work centers on her Cuban homeland, where her parents and grandparents were born. She is the author of incredible essays you can find all over the web and an immersive theater production called The Amparo Experience. She is the dreamer and 3D printer of so many incredible projects. Shade Mountain Press saw the beauty in Garcia’s 2015 novel, White Light, which interrogates one of Garcia’s obsessions, color. What if this character was a color? What would it mean if a chapter is cardinal red? We talk about the inspiration for that novel, as well as her most recent project, a radio play called Ich Bin Ein Berliner. This autobiographical story details her reaction to the fall of the Berlin wall and its rippling effect throughout Cuba. We explode the myth of the solitary writer and the rewards inherent in creating art in a collaborative fabric of creatives. Honorable Mentions: Poet, William Blake FAU Theater Lab Director and Garcia’s creative partner, Victoria Collado

    Published Date: February 2, 2023
    Duration: 00:25:40
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  • Virtual Conference | March 5, 2021

    Episode 169: #AWP21 Day 3, Episode 2

    Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guam. He is the co-founder of Ala Press, and the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, Habitat Threshold. He’s the recipient of many prizes, including the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award. An assistant professor of English at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, Santos Perez teaches Pacific literature and directs the Creative Writing program there. Also, shout-out to his gorgeous blog. In this episode, we chat with Craig about his most recent poetry collection, published at the very beginning of the pandemic, which has as its core climate activism and anxieties about the future of the planet his daughters are inheriting. Perez gives his readers great insight into the connection between humans and their environments. In this collection, Perez uses what he coined as ‘recycled form’—taking the form of older poems and inserting his own content into it. Perez’s Works: Hacha Saina Guma’ Lukao Undercurrent by Craig Santos Perez and Brandy N?lani McDougall Crosscurrent Honorable Mentions: Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet 17 Wallace Stevens’s 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird William Carlos Williams’s This Is Just To Say

    Published Date: February 2, 2023
    Duration: 00:20:27
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  • Virtual Conference | March 5, 2021

    Episode 168: #AWP21 Day 3, Episode 1

    Farid Matuk’s poetry, essays, and translations from Spanish appear in a wide range of publications and anthologies. He is the author of the poetry collection, This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine), several chapbooks including My Daughter La Chola (Ahsahta), and The Real Horse (2018). He teaches in the MFA program at University of Arizona, where he is poetry editor for Fence, and serves on the editorial board for the book series Research in Creative Writing at Bloomsbury. In this episode, we talk about Matuk’s newest collection of poetry, The Real Horse, and his intention behind not using punctuation throughout the book. Matuk passes on life-changing writing advice that he received about filling the negative space of a page and writing into the “weaving of self and other that’s always around us.” During his time as a professor at the University of Arizona, he was able to publish his poetry with the university press there. That’s also where he experienced, for the first time, the helpful process of the blind peer review. As we spoke about Matuk’s work at Fence, the phrase “mutual entanglement” came up to describe the work being done there. Matuk leaves us with the question, “Which phrases and ways of naming the world that feel really powerful today will end up with quotation marks around them?” Honorable Mentions: University of Arizona Press Fence Fence founder and editor, Rebecca Wolff Visual Artist, Nancy Friedemann-Sanchez and her paintings of lace. Poet, Jorie Graham Poet, John Ashbery

    Published Date: February 2, 2023
    Duration: 00:26:36
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  • Virtual Conference | March 5, 2021

    Episode 171: #AWP21 Day 3, Episode 4

    Aimee Bender graduated from UC Irvine and teaches at USC. Her books have received accolades in all the major outlets: from the New York Times, LA Times, & MCSweeney’s, to Oprah. Her latest novel, published July 2020, is The Butterfly Lampshade. When I was rattling off the list of Bender’s books, Kate deadpanned, “So she’s basically taken all the best titles from the universe.” In this episode, Bender reads from her latest novel. Of it, an astute reviewer wrote, “[it’s] as if we’d shrunk to fit inside a Joseph Cornell diorama... we feel as Francie does: that anything and anyone might be a two-way street, capable of passing from our side into theirs by means of illustration—or from their side into ours by means of emanation...and after ‘slipping into being...we really ought not to be here.’” Listen as we discuss why exposing your kids to things like modern dance and The Blue Man Group is a good thing, how to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on but also feel confident enough to vary your form as a writer, and remembering the mindless goodness (and potential writing prompt) in just staring at an object in space. (N.B. Your phone’s screen does not count.) Honorable Mentions: Flannery O’Connor’s reminder to us all: “There’s a certain grain of stupidity that the writer can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once.” (from O’Connor’s essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”) Best writer note to your younger self: “Write what you like, kid. Enough of this posturing.” Aimee Bender’s Incredible Backlist: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake The Girl in the Flammable Skirt: Stories The Color Master An Invisible Sign of My Own Willful Creatures: Stories

    Published Date: February 2, 2023
    Duration: 00:26:54
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  • Virtual Conference | March 3, 2021

    Episode 164: #AWP21 Day 1, Episode 1

    To kick off the podcast interviews at AWP, we were thrilled to talk to Lilly Dancyger. Her new memoir, Negative Space, comes out May 2021 with Santa Fe Writers Project. She’s the editor of the essay collection, Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger, and a contributing editor at Catapult. Among the other fantastic things with which she’s involved, she founded and co-hosts a reading series and newsletter (which you should subscribe to) called Memoir Monday. Honorable mentions: Artist Joe Schactman, Dancyger’s father whose story her memoir pieces together Writer Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir The Chronology of Water Memoir Monday’s partner publications Catapult, Granta, Guernica, Narratively, The Rumpus, and Literary Hub

    Published Date: February 1, 2023
    Duration: 00:24:07
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  • Virtual Conference | March 4, 2021

    Episode 165: #AWP21 Day 2, Episode 1

    AWP 21 Episode—Jeffrey Colvin (Day 2, Episode 1) We talk to Jeffrey Colvin about his stunning new book, Africaville. Jeffrey Colvin is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Harvard, and Columbia where he earned an MFA in fiction. He is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle and is assistant editor at Narrative Magazine. His debut novel, Africaville, is an expansive book, a genealogy of sorts that follows several family trees who have intertwined branches in an enclave in Halifax, Nova Scotia, called Woods Bluff and then later named Africaville. Honorable mentions: The 2001 New York Times article about Africville that spurred Colvin’s novel Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God

    Published Date: February 1, 2023
    Duration: 00:25:47
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  • Virtual Conference | March 4, 2021

    Episode 166: #AWP21 Day 2, Episode 2

    Alison Deming is so prolific and has been writing for so long that it was a bit overwhelming to pack into a 20-minute interview, but we tried our best. Hawthorne is Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona, where she founded the Field Studies in Writing Program in 2015. She has an MFA from Vermont College, a Stegner Fellowship, two poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and multiple other fellowships, residencies and prizes. Her new book, A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress, was released by Counterpoint Press in August. Honorable mentions: Poet Pattiann Rogers Novelist and short story writer Andrea Barrett Scottish poet and essayist Kathleen Jamie Writer and curator Rebecca Senf Writer Pam Houston Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret Savoy The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantu Guerilla Girls, an anonymous group of feminist activist artists Deming’s daughter, artist Lucinda Bliss

    Published Date: February 1, 2023
    Duration: 00:22:09
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  • Virtual Conference | March 4, 2021

    Episode 167: #AWP21 Day 2, Episode 3

    We talked to Michael Zapata about his novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau. It was the winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 from The Boston Globe and The Millions, and his debut novel. Zapata is a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine as well as on the core faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the MFA faculty of Northwestern University. This book is a wholly satisfying romp through the history of science fiction (even for the uninitiated!) with a healthy side-portion of theoretical physics. But please don’t be intimidated. Zapata’s prose is whimsical and yet gloriously skillful, encouraging us to “challenge our most potent ideologies.” Isn’t that what good art is supposed to do? Honorable Mentions: The Yellow House by Sarah Broom We by Yevgeny Zamyatin Chilean author Roberto Bolaño Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai

    Published Date: February 1, 2023
    Duration: 00:24:24
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  • Henry B. González Convention Center | March 5, 2020

    Episode 162: #AWP20 Day 2

    (Anna Lena, Paulette Perhach, Courtney Maum, Norma Elia Cantú, Michaeljulius Idani, Christopher Miguel Flakus, Jeneé Darden)

    Published Date: January 26, 2023
    Duration: 01:47:07
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  • Henry B. González Convention Center | March 6, 2020

    Episode 163: #AWP20 Day 3

    (Richard Z. Santos, Yodassa Williams, Alia Volz, Sonia Hamer, Chad Abushanab, David Laidacker-Luna, Viktoria Valenzuela, Tori Cárdenas, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Annie Shepherd) Fantastic advice from the authors, poets, & industry professionals at #AWP20. This is part one of a three-episode series featuring Bloomsday Literary’s partnership with #AWP20 to bring you all the literary goings-on from this year’s conference. Here’s Day Three!

    Published Date: January 26, 2023
    Duration: 01:46:19
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  • Henry B. González Convention Center | March 4, 2020

    Episode 161: #AWP20 Day 1

    (Angela Super, Outspoken Bean, Katharine Coldiron, Johnny Payne, Icess Fernandez) Fantastic advice from the authors, poets, & industry professionals at #AWP20. This is part one of a three-episode series featuring Bloomsday Literary’s partnership with #AWP20 to bring you all the literary goings-on from this year’s conference.

    Published Date: January 23, 2023
    Duration: 01:38:01
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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 10, 2017

    Episode 160: American Smooth: A Tribute To Rita Dove

    (Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Jericho Brown, Natasha Tretheway, Rita Dove) For over forty years, Rita Dove's storied career earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the position of US Poet Laureate, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Medal of Art. Among Dove's many contributions to American letters is the vast and lasting impact on poets all over the nation. This diverse panel of poets celebrate and pay homage to Rita Dove's continued legacy and influence as poet, teacher, and trailblazer. Rita Dove herself finishes the session with a brief reading and speech.

    Published Date: October 4, 2017
    Duration: 1:14:32

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 10, 2017

    Episode 159: Award-Winning Professional Publications with Preprofessional Staff: Mentorship and Applied Learning in Literary Publishing

    (Steve Halle, Holmes Troelstrup, Beth Staples, Meg Reid, Kate McMullen) The Publishing Laboratory at UNC Wilmington and the Publications Unit at Illinois State University have years of experience teaching the editing, design, production, and marketing of literary books and magazines. Panelists, including faculty, students, and alumni, detail the apprenticeship experience, best practices in applied learning, and the value of mentorship in the culture of literary publishing through creating professional materials for Ecotone, Lookout Books, SRPR, Obsidian, and FC2.

    Published Date: September 20, 2017
    Duration: 01:15:10
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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 9, 2017

    Episode 158: Amplifying Unheard Voices

    (Dave Eggers, Jennifer Lentfer, Rajasvini Bhansali, Mimi Lok) In a world of 24-hour news cycles and soundbites, whose stories get heard, and whose don't? How can we challenge the single story portrayal of human rights issues and of marginalized communities? This event sparks a conversation about the power of the story in human rights, and the roles of two organizations-Voice of Witness, a literary and human rights nonprofit, and Idex, an international development organization-in amplifying unheard voices in the United States and around the world.

    Published Date: September 13, 2017
    Duration: 01:11:52
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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 9, 2017

    Episode 157: Writerism: The Intersection of Community Activism and Writing Within and Beyond the Academy

    (Luis Rodriguez, Dagoberto Gilb, Aimee Suzara, Michael Warr) Panelists include creative writers who have also been founders or key players in community centers, cultural spaces, magazines, and advocacy organizations. The panel will address the conflicts and confluences of meaningful community activism with writing of skill, integrity, and substance. How does one balance aesthetics, ethics, and social engagement? Where is the border between art and the pamphlet? Writers in communities of color face unprecedented violence today. Are we writers in wartime?

    Published Date: September 6, 2017
    Duration: 01:05:18
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 11, 2017

    Episode 156: Gwendolyn Brooks 100th Anniversary Tribute

    (Mike Puican, Nora Brooks Blakely, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Rosellen Brown) 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize. Despite her accomplishments and immense influence on 20th-century writing, her place in the canon does not sufficiently reflect her work as a poet, member of the Black Arts movement, and agent for social change. Four people who knew her, including her daughter, Nora Brooks Blakely, will read her work and share thoughts of her enduring artistic, social, and personal impact.

    Published Date: August 30, 2017
    Duration: 01:11:45
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 9, 2017

    Episode 155: Celebrating the Hurston/Wright Foundation: Twenty-Seven Years of Literary Legacy

    (Laurie Jean Cannady, Yona Harvey, Darlene Taylor, A. Van Jordan, Dereck Rodriguez) Before articles decrying the limited opportunities for writers of color in publishing, there was Hurston/Wright, discovering, mentoring, and honoring African American writers. For more than a quarter of a century, Hurston/Wright has fostered a rigorous, nurturing space for writers at varying stages. This celebratory panel includes Hurston/Wright award winners, former workshop participants and faculty, and the current board chair, as they honor the legacy of this essential DC organization.

    Published Date: August 23, 2017
    Duration: 01:01:32
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 9, 2017

    Episode 154: Doing Good Better: Resources for Nonprofit Literary Organizations

    (Jerod Santek, Diane Zinna, Kim Patton, Andy Davis, Jessica Flynn, Taylor Craig) What resources are available to nonprofit literary organizations to help them improve their work and services? Representatives from leading national organizations dedicated to helping nonprofits of all sizes do good work better will discuss strategies in board development, fundraising, assessment and evaluation and more. The panel includes experts from BoardSource, The Foundation Center, National Arts Strategies, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

    Published Date: August 16, 2017
    Duration: 0:53:19
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 9, 2017

    Episode 153: The Imitation Game: Adapting Classic Narratives in Contemporary Literature

    (Kathryn Locey, Lorraine Lopez, Blas Falconer, Lynn Pruett) Isabel Allende claims that all stories have been told and that writers merely retell these, sometimes deliberately. For example, Jane Smiley drafted 1,000 Acres to rebut Shakespeare’s King Lear. Authors, writing in four genres—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, speak to the conscious process of adapting classic literature, sharing ways to eke inspiration and avoid derivation in this practice that can provide new perspectives to highlight and enrich enduring narratives.

    Published Date: August 9, 2017
    Duration: 00:58:29
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 11, 2017

    Episode 152: I Did It My Way: Writing Who We Are

    (Kevin Young, Celeste Ng, Melissa Stein, Ed Falco, Roxane Gay) What is this writing voice we’re always hearing about, and do we need one? Does a unifying vision or voice just happen, or is it something we work at? And once we've established a style that feels like our own, how do we avoid pigeonholing ourselves? How can we counter pressures and expectations—internal, cultural, racial, gendered, genre, professional—and just write? Five respected poets and prose writers will demystify, and perhaps remystify, how they stay true to themselves.

    Published Date: August 2, 2017
    Duration: 01:15:23
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 10, 2017

    Episode 151: Reclaiming the Past: The Challenge of Understanding Vanished Cultures

    (Matt Burriesci, Maitrayee Basu, Bret Schulte, Scott Burgan) Four accomplished nonfiction writers from different cultural backgrounds explore the challenges of reconstructing and translating cultural dimensions that are no longer easily accessible to modern Western audiences. From Hellenic culture to China’s Middle Kingdom, authors will discuss interpreting past cultural practices, recognizing the discomfort and surprise involved in cultural re-discovery.

    Published Date: July 26, 2017
    Duration: 0:48:51
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 1, 2016

    Episode 150: 40th Anniversary Reading from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College

    (Warren Wilson MFA Faculty and Alumni) Founded in 1976 by Ellen Bryant Voigt as the nation’s first low-residency program, the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College has counted some of the country’s finest poets and fiction writers among its faculty and graduates. Continuing a tradition started by the program at Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, NC—The Fastest Reading in the World—hour readers will be joined by other Warren Wilson MFA faculty and alumni in attendance to celebrate four decades of literary achievement.

    Published Date: July 19, 2017
    Duration: 01:01:27
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 11, 2017

    Episode 149: Arsenic Icing: Sentiment as Threat in Contemporary American Women's Poetry

    (Cate Marvin, Vievee Francis, Jennifer Knox, Brenda Shaughnessy, Erin Belieu) Five contemporary female American poets explore how sentimentality is deployed in 21st-century women's poetry, with regard to both content and rhetoric, as a means to counter traditional assumptions regarding female desire and identity. What personal and political alchemies occur when the affectionate address verges on acerbic? What transformations are sought when a female speaker, once familiar as mother, daughter, sister, wife, or lover, employs sentiment to reveal herself as Other?

    Published Date: July 12, 2017
    Duration: 01:13:55
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 10, 2017

    Episode 148: To Sing the Idea of All: Walt Whitman in DC (1863-73)

    (Brian Brodeur, Cornelius Eady, David Kirby, Nickole Brown, Dorianne Laux) The bard of democracy arrived in the Federal District to nurse his brother George, who was wounded at Fredericksburg in 1862. In the decade that followed, Whitman lived in the capital as civil servant, comforter of dying Union soldiers, and witness to the political upheaval of the end of the Civil War, the assassination of Lincoln, and Reconstruction. Join us for a discussion of this decade's influence on Whitman, and the legacy of this poet's life and work on American poetry and poetics.

    Published Date: June 28, 2017
    Duration: 01:12:45
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 10, 2017

    Episode 147: The Poet Confronts History: The Art of Research for Creative Writing

    (Robert Strong, Cole Swensen, Brian Teare, Jessica Jacobs, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers) Writers are increasingly exploring historical events and archives for material, often to engage with the diverse, and sometimes silenced, voices of our past. Our panelists, poets known for their work with history, discuss creativity in the research process, venues for publication, and strategies for landing research-oriented writing fellowships. Moderated by the editor of the Poetic Research column at the journal of early American history and culture.

    Published Date: June 21, 2017
    Duration: 01:14:29
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 10, 2017

    Episode 145: National Monuments: The Poetry of Contested Spaces

    (Chris Santiago, Aimee Suzara, Heid E. Erdrich, Brandon Som) The US has 121 protected areas known as national monuments, many of which can be found in Washington, DC. A distinguished panel of poets considers these natural and man-made landmarks as conservation sites, as poetic subjects, and as contested spaces of living Native American, Mexican American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander cultures. The panel will also consider national monuments in the broader sense of the myth-making of nation states and ongoing struggles over canon formation.

    Published Date: May 31, 2017
    Duration: 01:11:14
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 11, 2017

    Episode 144: Putting Madness to Work: The Poetics and Politics of Recovery

    (Cynthia Oka, Jeffery Renard Allen, Rickey Laurentiis, Seema Reza, Vincent Toro) Madness is a construct often attached to the work and lives of writers. How do writers working at the intersections of race, gender, and class utilize it to orient toward contemporary discourses of mental health that disproportionately target their communities, for instance, around colonial erasure, sexual violence, police brutality, war? Panelists explore how their work is informed by and/or subverts the politics by which trauma is linked to social identity and prescribed strategies of recovery.

    Published Date: May 24, 2017
    Duration: 01:10:15
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 10, 2017

    Episode 143: Double Bind: Women Writers on Ambition

    (Pam Houston, Erika Sanchez, Claire Vaye Watkins, Hawa Allen) A woman must be ambitious in order to have a meaningful career in the arts. But ambition in women is often seen as un-feminine, egoistic, and aggressive rather than crucial to great work and identity. Until recently, no conversation has taken place to help women navigate this pervasive but unspoken double bind. On this panel, women across diverse backgrounds genres provide both stories from the trenches and practical strategies for progressing in the arts, academia, and beyond.

    Published Date: May 17, 2017
    Duration: 01:11:41
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | May 10, 2017

    Episode 142: Zora's Legacy: Black Women Writing Fiction About the South

    (Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, Tayori Jones, and Stephanie Powell Watts) During the Great Migration, many African Americans relocated to the US North. Yet southern culture survives in ancestral memories and in black women's writing in particular. Why do so many black women writers remain fascinated by the South? This panel features five African American women authors who discuss why they set their work in the South and how they confront specific craft issues when writing fiction about this region of profound cultural resonance.

    Published Date: May 10, 2017
    Duration: 01:09:44
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 9, 2017

    Episode 141: The Art of Reinvention

    (Dana Levin, Richard Siken, Sarah Vap, Jaswinder Bolina) How do we avoid writing the same poem our entire lives? How do we frame reinvention from project to project? When can the pressures of reinvention become limiting and when transformative? How does material success and failure affect artistic change? Five poets try to shed light on these questions by providing ideas, inspiration, and one poem from their own reinvention projects.

    Published Date: May 3, 2017
    Duration: 01:03:31
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | April 26, 2017

    Episode 140: A Reading by 2016 Guggenheim Fellows in Poetry

    (Beth Bachmann, Rick Barot, Deborah Landau, Jericho Brown) Often characterized as"midcareer" awards, Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. These recipients from the class of 2016 showcase the geographic, cultural, and aesthetic diversity of the latest fellows in poetry.

    Published Date: April 26, 2017
    Duration: 01:09:10
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 10, 2017

    Episode 139: I Told the Paper with the Pencil: How Refugee and Immigrant Teens Find and Share Their Voices Through Writing

    (Sarah Schneider, Richard Russo, Lewis Robinson, Molly McGrath, Sonya Tomlinson) We understand each other through stories. How can writers and teachers use writing to help the newly arrived balance the challenges they face? How can sharing stories and building community in the teaching setting help students and writers do the same outside of it? The Telling Room of Portland, Maine, honored by the White House for its writing program for immigrant youth, discusses and demonstrates the power of connecting teens to their community through writing - and what we gain when we listen.

    Published Date: April 19, 2017
    Duration: 01:15:23
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 11, 2017

    Episode 138: Don't Forget the Day Job: Preparing Creative Writing Graduates for Lifelong Careers

    (Paul Munden, Jen Webb, Randall Albers, Paul Hetherington, Lori A. May) The number of creative writing programs and the numbers of students in those programs are expanding significantly. But employment outcomes for creative writing graduates are poor: research shows that they either experience a working life characterized by precarity, low wages, and high volunteerism, or else must find employment in other areas. In this panel, we discuss ways in which curriculum content can prepare students for a future that includes creative and professional success.

    Published Date: April 12, 2017
    Duration: 0:50:47
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 9, 2017

    Episode 137: Contemporary Mythopoetics

    (James Allen Hall, Jennifer Chang, Sarah Blake, Jehanne Dubrow, Gary Jackson) Explore the craft of myth and archetype in our own work and in poems we love, to better understand how re/making myths can change and expand our concept of the mythopoetic and of the self.

    Published Date: April 5, 2017
    Duration: 01:03:27
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Walter E. Washington Convention Center | February 10, 2017

    Episode 136: Milkweed Editions Reading

    (Daniel Slager, Dan Beachy-Quick, Deni Ellis Bechard, and Lee Ann Roripaugh) These outstanding writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry showcase the range, depth, and uniqueness of the Milkweed Editions publishing list - from the personal to the political, imperial misadventure to ecological destruction, the sacred to the unspeakable. Introduced by Milkweed Editions publisher and CEO Daniel Slager, each writer will read from his work.

    Published Date: March 29, 2017
    Duration: 01:09:15
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 2, 2016

    Episode 135: Writing About Other(ed) Spaces

    (Catina Bacote, Wendy Call, Jeremy Jones, JustinNobel, Stephen West) Five nonfiction writers discuss the pressures and possibilities of writing about marginalized and overlooked places - empty corners of Appalachia, tornado-torn stretches of the Deep South, housing projects in Connecticut, immigrant communities in New Jersey and LA, and beyond. Writing in forms ranging from memoir to journalism, the panelists grapple with how to honestly and artfully render people and places too often stereotyped or simplified or silenced.

    Published Date: September 14, 2016
    Duration: 01:08:59
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 2, 2016

    Episode 134: Agents Without Borders

    (Betsy Amster, Elise Capron, Rebecca Friedman, Aimee Liu, Angela Rinaldi) Many writers believe that the only or best literary agents are located on the East Coast, but West Coast agents beg to differ. The major publishing houses may still reside in and around New York City, but major authors live throughout the world, and Pacific Coast agents have found that literary representation outside New York may actually be to an author's advantage. Join this panel of West Coast pros to learn how they navigate a publishing world without borders.

    Published Date: September 7, 2016
    Duration: 01:11:50
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 2, 2016

    Episode 133: Where Community and Culture Collide: 15 years of the YMCA's Downtown Writers Center

    (Debra Dean, Matthew Frank, Gregory Pardlo, Jennifer Pashley, Georgia Popoff) Since January 2001, the YMCA's Downtown Writers Center in Syracuse, New York, has been the Central New York State region's only community center for the literary arts. In its first 15 years, nearly 400 authors have read at the DWC, and thousands of students have honed their craft at the DWC's extensive creative writing workshop series. This panel of program staff and faculty, former students, and guest authors explores and celebrates the DWC's wide-reaching impact on the literary arts in the CNY region.

    Published Date: August 31, 2016
    Duration: 01:05:41
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 2, 2016

    Episode 132: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Philip Levine

    (Christopher Buckley, Vievee Francis, Edward Hirsch, Dorianne Laux, and Malena Morling) Five poets who were close to Philip Levine and his work speak about his life and his influence on a generation, and read selections from his poetry, along with one original poem that was significantly influenced by his work.

    Published Date: August 24, 2016
    Duration: 01:01:09
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 1, 2016

    Episode 131: Adapting to Adaptation: Making the Most of Going Hollywood

    (Stephen Elliott, Jennifer Gilmore, Jenny Halper, Eleanor Henderson, Cheryl Strayed) For many writers, having a novel or memoir optioned for film is a dream come true. But a book's adaptation to the screen is often as complicated as a writer's adaptation to the movie business. The authors on this panel, all of whom have had a book translated into film in the recent past, explore the losses and gifts of adaptation, offering insight about how best to stay involved throughout the experience, while also reflecting on the nature of narrative, art, and ownership.

    Published Date: August 17, 2016
    Duration: 01:04:47
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 2, 2016

    Episode 130: Brazilian Women Writers

    (Angelica Freitas, Tiffany Higgins, Hilary Kaplan, John Keene, Ellen Dore Watson) Translators of 20th- and 21st-century poetry and fiction by women from Brazil read from their work and discuss the art of translation and the craft and advocacy inherent in translating writing by women. This panel follows last year's on translating "Brazilianness" to focus on women writers, the stakes of that categorization, and the vibrant landscape of translations of women's writing into English. Form, feminism, gender and sexual identity, age, language, race, and class all come into play.

    Published Date: August 10, 2016
    Duration: 01:01:55
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 2, 2016

    Episode 129: UA Poetry Center Presents: Spectacular Poetics & the Poetry of Spectacle

    (Hannah Ensor, Kimiko Hahn, Adrian Matejka, Khadijah Queen) If poetry engages with spectacle, why, and in what ways? In this panel, we address increasingly ubiquitous confluences of poetics and spectacle. Is the poet's task to call attention to bright screens, to celebrity culture, to the many public-facing pleasures and pains of the 21st century? Do poets use spectacle (their understanding of audience, attention, flashing lights) to their advantage? When it comes to spectacle, do we want today's poets to decry it? Reveal it? Hold it up? Celebrate it?

    Published Date: August 3, 2016
    Duration: 01:08:27
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | March 31, 2016

    Episode 128: Just Saying: A Tribute to Rae Armantrout

    (Rae Armantrout, Stephanie Burt, Amy Catanzano, Catherine Wagner, Monica Youn) Four author-critics approach Armantrout's work from a variety of angles, including her association with Language poetry, her exploration of science through verse, her treatment of pop culture and current events, and her merging of everyday experience with epistemological questions about perception.

    Published Date: July 27, 2016
    Duration: 01:09:05
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | March 30, 2016

    Episode 127: Creative Writing and Resistance in the Classroom: Helping Students Write Social Justice

    (Fred Arroyo, Hayan Charara, Nan Cuba, Ellen Meeropol, Achy Obejas) Creative writing students compelled to write about social justice may be intimated by the challenges of shaping art, craft, and social forces in their writing. How do teachers encourage students to explore political inequality and injustice, while crafting narrative art? Panelists discuss specific pedagogical approaches and techniques that both respect students' backgrounds and beliefs and encourage their exploration, examination, and literary engagement with our complex world.

    Published Date: July 20, 2016
    Duration: 01:10:44
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 1, 2016

    Episode 126: Hugo House Literary Series All-Stars

    (Jennine Capo Crucet, Natalie Diaz, Roxane Gay, Peter Mountford, Jess Walter) The Literary Series at Hugo House, Seattle's place for writers, features three writers and a musician, all performing new work commissioned by Hugo House on a theme - such as death, humor, or both of those combined. This reading features five former Lit Series stars reading excerpts from the works they produced for their respective events. The panelists also briefly discuss the joys and horrors of writing to a prompt, and what became of the work they produced for the series.

    Published Date: July 13, 2016
    Duration: 00:57:59
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 1, 2016

    Episode 125: The Changing Face of Book Publicity: Get the Most from Your Publicist

    (Michelle Blankenship, Kirker Butler, Mitchell Jackson, Angela Pneuman, Christine Sneed) You've sold your book, only to find out that the independent press, the university press, or even the traditional New York press has limited resources dedicated to its publicity. This panel of publicists and authors discusses how best to coordinate efforts between in-house publicists and independent publicists and explores the measures you should - and should not - take on your own behalf. Discussion includes traditional media and social media, as well as how to use events to your advantage.

    Published Date: July 6, 2016
    Duration: 01:07:33
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 2, 2016

    Episode 124: On the Dangerous Joy of Writing Outside Your Ethnicity, Gender, Orientation, Age, Etc.

    (Jodi Angel, Skip Horack, Christian Kiefer, Bich Minh Nguyen, Luis Urrea) As fiction writers, we often feel pressure to write inside the confines of our own experience, as defined by our ethnic identity, gender, sexual orientation, economic class, and so on. This panel explores the edges and interstices of that pressure. In what contexts is it acceptable to write outside such confines? In what contexts is it not? What does "diversity" mean when creating a fictional world? As writers, who has cultural permission to press past the confines of one's own identity?

    Published Date: June 29, 2016
    Duration: 00:59:26
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | March 31, 2016

    Episode 123: How Gay Is This Book?: 21st Century Approaches to the LGBTQ Classroom

    (Sarah Chavez, Clarence Harlan Orsi, Jennifer Perrine, Timothy Schaffert, Stacey Waite) Students and instructors often differ in their interpretation of what constitutes a queer text. Considering the varieties of gender identification and the spectrum of sexual orientation, as well as what it means to enact a queer pedagogy in both form and content of the classroom, panelists explore the contemporary pitfalls and joys of helping to shape students' engagement with LGBTQ literature. Panelists read from potentially contested queer texts as well as discuss pedagogical practices.

    Published Date: June 22, 2016
    Duration: 01:14:21
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 2, 2016

    Episode 122: Forming Resilient Partnerships: How Literary Nonprofits, Schools, and Individuals Can Collaborate Effectively

    (Joel Arquillos, Benjamin De Leon, Grant Faulkner, Gerald Richards) Join 826 National, 826LA, and National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) as they discuss different strategies on forming partnerships between schools, literary nonprofits, volunteers, and teachers on both a local, national, and global scale, and how these partnerships enable creative solutions for both educators and students. What are the challenges of maintaining these partnerships, and what is their impact on the diverse population of under-resourced students they aim to empower through writing?

    Published Date: June 15, 2016
    Duration: 01:02:10
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 2, 2016

    Episode 121: From the Fishouse: A Twelve-Year Anniversary Reading and Celebration

    (Curtis Bauer, Nickole Brown, Tarfia Faizullah, Ross Gay, Layli Long Soldier, Jamaal May) Since 2004, From the Fishouse has provided the public greater access to the poems and voices of emerging US poets by using online audio archives, simulcast readings, and other media to bring poetry into the home and classroom. After a major overhaul, the new and improved website has expanded to include emerging international poets while continuing to showcase the finest poets writing in the US. Five award-winning poets, both emerging and emerged, will read their work and work of other poets on the site.

    Published Date: June 8, 2016
    Duration: 01:00:21
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Los Angeles Convention Center | April 1, 2016

    Episode 120: From MFA to JOB: Making a Living, Making a Difference

    (Jen Benka, Kenny Kruse, Monica Prince, Kenyatta Rogers) While tenure-track teaching and publishing are often the dream of MFA candidates, the competition is increasingly competitive. The creative and nonprofit sectors hold alternative employment possibilities for writers while making a real difference for communities. This panel ignites the imagination around the journey to meaningful careers that allow MFA graduates to work within a community of writers and artists, cultivate and curate artistic experiences and opportunities, and make a living.

    Published Date: June 1, 2016
    Duration: 01:06:12
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 119: The Ethics of Book Reviewing

    (Stephen Burt, Brian Evenson, Karen Long, Eric Lorberer, Rusty Morrison) The ethical boundaries of book reviewing in an age when everyone has "friended" everyone else can be fuzzy. How do we define, avoid, or accept "conflict of interest" as methodologies and technologies change? This panel, made up of authors, reviewers, and small press publishers, will grapple with the dilemmas of the current world of book reviewing, discuss ways out of the coterie vs. "objective" binary, and hash out some ideas to make reviewing more transparent, honest, and useful in the future.

    Published Date: March 16, 2016
    Duration: 00:58:56
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 118: A Reading by LSU Press Poets

    (Kelly Cherry, Alice Friman, David Kirby, Anya Silver) LSU Press has been at the forefront of university-press publishing for seventy-nine years. This reading showcases four poets reading from the most recent of their LSU books - four poets whose exciting work not only celebrates the many successful years of this press but also affirms its commitment to publishing the finest of poetry. The poets will also read from the work of our missing panelist, the late Claudia Emerson, to whom the readings will be dedicated.

    Published Date: March 9, 2016
    Duration: 01:06:52
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 117: Where We Begin to Revise the Poem

    (Peter Campion, Erica Dawson, James Harms, John Hoppenthaler, Keetje Kuipers) This panel will provide very specific revision strategies for use in the poetry workshop. Revision at the level of the word, the line, the sentence, and the stanza will be highlighted. Each panelist will provide three favorite points of revision, with each point contributing toward an understanding of the sort of shaping and negotiation that goes beyond mere editing, the sort that students ought to be engaged in as they prepare their portfolios and continue on in a life of poetry making.

    Published Date: March 2, 2016
    Duration: 01:11:10
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 116: The Art of Literary Editing

    (Jeffery Renard Allen, Brigid Hughes, Ethan Nosowsky, Elisabeth Schmitz, Margaret Wrinkle) Every writer has to start somewhere, but the world of literary journals and publishing houses can often seem opaque. This panel brings together a diverse group of editors and writers to discuss the publication process and the editor-author dynamic. Speakers include award-winning authors and their editors from Grove Atlantic and Graywolf Press.

    Published Date: February 24, 2016
    Duration: 01:05:07
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 115: Three Decades, Four Poets: Cave Canem Presents Whiting Award Winners

    (John Keene, Tyehimba Jess, Alison Meyers, Tylias Moss, and Riley Atsuro) Poets Tyehimba Jess, John Keene, Thylias Moss, and Atsuro Riley read selections from their original work, including poems that earned them recognition as Whiting Award winners. Their presentation represents three decades of excellence and the diverse aesthetics that resonate with Cave Canem Foundation's mission and values.

    Published Date: February 17, 2016
    Duration: 01:12:33
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 114: How to Teach Literary Magazines in the Classroom and Why

    (Rebecca Morgan Frank, Rachel May, Michael Nye, Jenn Scheck-Kahn, Christina Thompson) For new writers, the rich community of literary magazines is an invaluable resource of inspiration, education, and publication, and yet such writers know very little about this vast and varied living literature that's dependent on their readership for survival. From our teacher panelists, learn three ways to integrate literary magazines into university writing and publishing classes and take our applicable tips and tricks home to your classroom.

    Published Date: February 10, 2016
    Duration: 00:44:35
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 113: How to Begin After “The End”: Publishing Pros on Turning Your Manuscript into a Book

    Through trial and error, many literary writers with persistence and talent become adept at placing poems, stories, and essays in individual journals throughout the year. Once a long project is finished, however, the path to publication is not always clear, especially if the work is anything besides prose with an obvious commercial appeal. The editors and agent on this panel will offer practical advice for literary writers whose novels, memoirs, and collections are ready to meet the world.

    Published Date: February 3, 2016
    Duration: 01:05:34
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 112: Make It New(s): A Reading and Conversation with Jeffrey Brown, Ted Kooser, and Connie Wanek, Sponsored by Copper Canyon Press

    (Jeffery Brown, Ted Kooser, Connie Wanek, Michael Wiegers) PBS correspondent Jeffrey Brown, Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser, and Minnesota poet Connie Wanek are masters of narrative, image, and metaphor. Through their poetry they bring forth Ezra Pound’s famous statements: “Make it new” and “Poetry is news that stays news.” This reading and conversation is that rare arch from kitchen-window views to global news, from activities as common as sharing a sandwich and canoeing a remote lake to witnessing and reporting events that grip everyone’s attention.

    Published Date: January 27, 2016
    Duration: 01:10:51
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 111: The Sonnet: Not Just for Men in Tights

    (Maryann Corbett, Allison Joseph, Marilyn Nelson, Nasir Sakandar) Contemporary sonnet is not a contradiction in terms. This timeless and versatile form can single handedly deliver your creative writing workshop, literature classroom, or even your composition classroom from villainous mindsets like narcissism, nihilism, and flabby writing. Our panelists, who are writers, teachers, and admirers of the sonnet old and new, will share strategies and insights so you can harness its superpowers to help your students.

    Published Date: January 20, 2016
    Duration: 01:05:38
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 110: Disappearance and Forgetting: Geeshie Wiley and Last Kind Words Blues, A Lecture by Greil Marcus, Sponsored by the Poetry Foundation

    (Greil Marcus, Robert Polito) In 1930 a blues singer and guitarist named Geeshie Wiley recorded a song that opened up the deepest crevices of the American imagination. Then she fell off the map. While recent research has, for the first time, tracked the outlines of her life, she remains in the mist—and in this talk, the song writes the singer's adventures in the long years after she once spoke in public to describe life as she knew it. A conversation with Poetry Foundation president Robert Polito follows.

    Published Date: January 13, 2016
    Duration: 01:14:11
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 109: The Pedagogical Push: Post-Graduation Transition to Being an Adjunct

    (Marina Blitschteyn, Elliott Freeman, Katharine Johnsen, Rachel Kennedy, Christine Utz) Emerging writers striving to master craft at the same time they are teaching it have some serious questions: How do emerging writers transition into adjunct positions after graduation? What about those who don’t want the hassle of hustling? This group of emerging writers, recent graduates, teaching assistants, and adjuncts will discuss strategies for maintaining an active writing life while managing the stressful juggle of jobs, both adjunct and otherwise, following graduate school.

    Published Date: January 6, 2016
    Duration: 00:52:56
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 108: Neglected American Masters

    (Jericho Brown, James Allen Hall, Yona Harvey, Paisley Rekdal, Richard Siken) This panel spotlights the poet's poet whom we did not encounter in our formal educations or who has slipped under the radar of anthologies or prizes, but whose work is undeniably masterful. Examples might be Gwendolyn Brooks, Muriel Rukeyser, Bob Kaufman, Laura Riding Jackson, Lorine Niedecker, Audre Lorde, and Robert Hayden, among others. The panel analyzes notions of poetic mastery, the politics of neglect, and the ways in which teaching is a kind of canon-making.

    Published Date: December 16, 2015
    Duration: 01:08:15
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 107: T.C. Boyle, Ron Carlson, and Susan Straight: Rewriting the West, Sponsored by Red Hen Press

    (T.C. Boyle, Ron Carlson, Kate Gale, Susan Straight) Celebrated authors Ron Carlson, Susan Straight, and T.C. Boyle present vastly different vistas of the American West, from the peaks and plateaus of the mountainous interior, to the endless variety of life in Central and Southern California, to the streets and alleys of Rio Seco, fictional seat of the Inland Empire. They will read from their work and discuss the importance of place in their writing. Moderated by Kate Gale, managing editor of Red Hen Press.

    Published Date: December 9, 2015
    Duration: 01:09:34
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 9, 2015

    Episode 106: How I Taught Then, How I Teach Now

    (Matt Bell, Jennine Capo Crucet, Cathy Day, Derek Palacio, Joseph Scapellato) When experience forces us to challenge the assumptions that underpin our teaching philosophies, how do we sensibly revise our syllabi, course element by course element? In this panel, five teachers of writing share what they grew into knowing. They will describe how an active awareness of their changing assumptions changed their courses for the better. Practical before-and-after examples of course materials promise to make this panel useful for beginners and veterans alike.

    Published Date: December 2, 2015
    Duration: 00:58:33
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 105: The Other Track: MFAs in the Book Business

    (Caroline Casey, Jynne Martin, Leslie Shipman, Jeff Shotts, Craig Teicher) It’s often said that MFA grads do one of two things to earn money: teach writing or work in the book business. Much has been said about MFAs who teach, but writers also fill the ranks of publishing houses and other book biz institutions. This panel will focus on how writers become publishing professionals—editors, publicists, arts administrators, reviewers—and look at the ways their degrees and writerly have shaped their careers and how they do their jobs. Sponsored by Publishers Weekly.

    Published Date: November 25, 2015
    Duration: 00:57:30
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 104: A Reading and Conversation with Vijay Seshadri and Arthur Sze, Sponsored by Graywolf Press and Kundiman

    (Tina Chang, Vijay Seshadri, Arthur Sze) This featured event will highlight two of this country's most respected poets, Vijay Seshadri and Arthur Sze. Vijay Seshadri is the most recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the first Asian American poet to have received that honor. Arthur Sze is one of the most renowned poets of the last thirty years. Together, this is sure to be a remarkable poetry reading, and a marvelous way to promote and discuss poetry by Asian American writers. Introduced and moderated by poet Tina Chang.

    Published Date: November 18, 2015
    Duration: 01:20:32
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 103: From Rent Parties to Kickstarter: Toward a Democratic Patronage of Poetry

    (Colleen Robertson Abel, Millicent Accardi, Marty McConnell, Eileen Myles, Rita Mae Reese) Have you seen your poems on blogs or pillows sold on Etsy but weren't even consulted or paid for their use? Would you like to receive payment for your poetry? Do you have a special project that needs funding? This panel will identify avenues of support for poets who make potential readers more aware of and invested in poetry as a living art form. We will explore the concept of the gift economy, aggregated sites for donations, crowdsourcing, rent parties, and more.

    Published Date: November 11, 2015
    Duration: 00:57:00
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 102: The Art of the Art of Writing

    (Charles Baxter, Stacey D'Erasmo, Carl Phillips) There is an art to writing about the art of writing. Three highly esteemed writers and teachers will discuss the current state of critical writing about craft and how they approach writing about the art of fiction and the art of poetry through their contributions to "The Art of..." series, a line of books that examines singular issues facing the contemporary writer. Discussion among the panelists will extend to further conversation with the audience.

    Published Date: November 4, 2015
    Duration: 01:00:12
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 101: Teaching: The Life of Poetry and Muriel Rukeyser

    (Jen Benka, Jan Freeman, D (Dennis) Nurkse, Renée Olander, Tim Seibles) This panel of five poets explores and discusses approaches to teaching poetry using Muriel Rukeyser's 1949 classic The Life of Poetry as a foundational text. Dimensions of our discussion include attending to the fear of poetry, writing, and reading poetry in times of political conflict, and the practical uses of poetry. As teachers, publishers, and practitioners of poetry, we address how to incorporate The Life of Poetry—including its radical assertions and wide-ranging interrogation of public life—into workshops and other courses.

    Published Date: October 28, 2015
    Duration: 0:53:35
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 9, 2015

    Episode 100: Literary Arts Institute 18th Anniversary Reading

    (Kim Anno, Anne Carson, Mark Conway, Marie Howe, Claudia Rankine) To celebrate a dozen and a half years of serving rural audiences in Central Minnesota and the Twin Cities metro, this reading features three writers who have helped create and extend the reach of the LAI through their own luminous work. One writer will read from the newest book printed in the LAI's book arts studio and reflect with the book artist on the collaborative process of combining text and image.

    Published Date: October 21, 2015
    Duration: 01:00:45
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 9, 2015

    Episode 99: What We Hate: Editorial Dos and Don'ts

    (Jordan Bass, Emerson (Chip) Blake, Cheston Knapp, Carolyn Kuebler, Jennifer Sahn, Patrick Thomas) You won’t find this in the FAQ. Get it straight from the source. Five distinguished magazine and book editors speak candidly about what they love and loathe and everything in between. What do editors really want from writers? What do they absolutely not want? If you’re positively sure you know the answers to these questions, then don’t come to this panel featuring editors from The Believer, Milkweed Editions, Tin House, New England Review, and Orion.

    Published Date: October 14, 2015
    Duration: 01:04:34
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 98: Puzzle and Mystery: Orchestrating the Known and the Unknown

    (Natalie Bakopoulos, Lan Samantha Chang, Steven Schwartz, Peter Turchi) Every story, novel, and poem strikes a balance not just between what's included and what's omitted, but between what is known—by the characters, by the narrator, and by the writer—and what is unknown, even unknowable. Effective choices regarding inclusion and presentation can create productive tension and realistic complexity; less effective ones can result in vagueness, obscurity, and unhelpful opacity. This panel will discuss examples from longer and shorter works.

    Published Date: October 7, 2015
    Duration: 01:07:18
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 9, 2015

    Episode 97: Women of Copper Canyon Press: A Reading and Discussion

    (Erin Belieu, Deborah Landau, Camille Rankine, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tonaya Thompson) A reading and discussion by a group of female authors who have published with Copper Canyon Press over the past decade. Hear these acclaimed poets read new work and share their insights on writing, teaching, and crafting a book. Audiences will listen to a brief reading from the authors before they participate in a discussion with the managing editor of Copper Canyon.

    Published Date: September 30, 2015
    Duration: 01:07:02
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 96: Nonviolence in the Creative Writing Workshop

    (Joshua Folmar, Maxine Hong Kingston, Becca Lachman, Fred Marchant, Kim Stafford) Toxic critique often wounds writers. How might some principles of non-violent engagement transform the creative writing workshop? What happens when writers listen well? How can deeply receptive listening - to texts and to writers - kindle dialogue about new work? Despite diversity of perspectives, how do we seek common ground as writers helping writers? The panelists will explore these and related questions about how non-violent ethics can be profoundly practical in the creative writing workshop.

    Published Date: September 23, 2015
    Duration: 01:11:40
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 95: U & I: Incorporating Famous Folks as Metaphor in Memoir

    (Michael Martone, Dinty Moore, Elena Passarello, Sue William Silverman) Four memoirists discuss the possibilities, pitfalls, giddy pleasures, and pesky legal problems that can arise from using celebrities as context and metaphor in creative nonfiction. Though the idea goes back to The Divine Comedy, and Dante’s version of Virgil, the negotiation between truth and fantasy can be much trickier in nonfiction. The panelists will discuss incorporating figures such as Pat Boone, Richard Nixon, Dan Quayle, and (the artist formerly known as) Prince as “characters” in their nonfiction books and essays.

    Published Date: September 16, 2015
    Duration: 01:10:11
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 9, 2015

    Episode 94: A Reading and Conversation with Lily King, Anthony Marra, and Jayne Anne Phillips, Sponsored by National Book Critics Circle

    (Jane Ciabattari, Lily King, Anthony Marra, Jayne Anne Phillips) Three National Book Critics Circle Award honorees—Jayne Anne Phillips, a winner for her novel Machine Dreams, Lily King, a 2014 fiction finalist, and Anthony Marra, winner of the NBCC’s inaugural John Leonard Award for first book—read from their work and discuss the challenges of writing novels—especially first novels—in a moderated conversation with critic Jane Ciabattari, NBCC Vice President/Online.

    Published Date: September 9, 2015
    Duration: 01:06:18
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 9, 2015

    Episode 93: New Trends in Literary Publishing

    (Deena Drewis, Jon Fine, Jeffrey Lependorf, Fiona McCrae, Kevin Nguyen, Nathan Rostron) Get the latest on the greatest issues facing literary publishing from a panel of individuals shaping the industry.

    Published Date: September 2, 2015
    Duration: 01:07:38
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 92: Second Sight: Teaching Revision Skills in the Workshop

    (Bruce Beasley, Kat Finch, Lily Hoang, A.J Verdelle, Rachel Yoder) The teaching of specific revision skills often gets scant time in workshops, overshadowed by the process of critiquing first drafts. Authors of poetry, fiction, plays, nonfiction, and craft books, ranging from an MFA student to an editor of a journal devoted wholly to revision, discuss strategies for teaching revision techniques effectively in workshop. Handouts include unsuccessful first drafts of famous literary works and the revisions that got them from alpha to omega.

    Published Date: August 26, 2015
    Duration: 00:56:37
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 91: Literature and Hip Hop: An Investigation, Sponsored by Rain Taxi Review of Books

    (Kevin Beacham, Dessa, Eric Lorberer, Adrian Matejka, P.O.S.) Arguments abound over whether rap is or isn't poetry, with some arguing for its literary merit and others saying it shouldn't have to smuggle itself into the critical conversation tucked in the dust jacket of another genre. This group of acclaimed practitioners of hip hop and poetry alike, including Kevin Beacham, Dessa, POS, and Adrian Matejka, will showcase hip hop lyrics and poems and debate about the spaces where literature and hip hop converge.

    Published Date: August 19, 2015
    Duration: 01:03:38
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 90: Joshua Ferris and Dinaw Mengestu: A Reading and Conversation

    (Joshua Ferris, Laurie Hertzel, Dinaw Mengestu) Join us for a reading and discussion with two of contemporary literature’s brightest stars, Joshua Ferris and Dinaw Mengestu. Joshua Ferris, a finalist for the National Book Award and named one the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" fiction writers worth watching, among other awards, will discuss his latest work To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. Dinaw Mengestu is the best-selling author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, How to Read the Air, and most recently All Our Names. He was also named a "20 Under 40" writer by the New Yorker as well as included in a short list of "5 Under 35" by the National Book Award Foundation. The event is moderated by Laurie Hertzel, Senior Books Editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

    Published Date: August 12, 2015
    Duration: 01:22:06
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 89: Striving for Balance Between Language and Prejudice in Teaching Writing

    (Alexander Chee, Jennine Capó Crucet, Danielle Evans, Mat Johnson, Christine Lee) Writers and creative writing instructors discuss teaching strategies for addressing sexist/homophobic/racist work in the classroom. What opportunities exist when encountered with such work? How does one dismantle pejorative workshop commentary that promotes marginalization while maintaining open dialogue? The diverse panel will explore topics of artistic integrity around the author/narrator/character convergence, as well as provide pedagogical tools to address classroom prejudice head on.

    Published Date: August 5, 2015
    Duration: 01:06:38
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 88: The Art of the Encounter: Structuring Short Fiction

    (Arna Bontemps Hemenway, Caitlin Horrocks, Rebecca Makkai) Short stories are demanding in their precise elusiveness. While novels should be the journey into the coal mine, we are told, stories must be the multi-faceted jewel awaiting discovery. Not a long friendship, but a haunting encounter. In this panel, five writers who’ve found success from The New Yorker to Best American Short Stories discuss how to create, utilize, and refine short story structure to this end, especially at the stages of premise, conception, revision, and reader experience.

    Published Date: July 29, 2015
    Duration: 0:55:52
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 87: The Poem as a Bodily Thing

    (Jan Beatty, Todd Davis, Ross Gay, Aimee Nezhukamatathil) Poets write bodies into being in myriad manifestations: sick, sexual, growing, even dying bodies. And all of this is done while the artist herself resides within a body that leaves an indelible mark upon the work of making poems. How does the fact that hearts beat, lungs expand, fingers feel, and tongues taste, affect our practices of this ancient, sensual art? This panel will discuss the role bodies play in composing their own poems, as well as in reading the work of other poets.

    Published Date: July 22, 2015
    Duration: 01:07:00
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 86: Women Writers of the American West: Definitions and Readings

    (Kathy Fish, Pam Houston, Paisley Rekdal, Tamara Linse, Bonnie ZoBell) Five writers whose material couldn't be more disparate. What they do have in common is they're from the West, hailing from Wyoming and California, Utah and Colorado. Can we make generalizations about women's experiences in a place so vast? Five female writers will present diverse visions of the contemporary American West by each giving a one-sentence definition and reading from her work.

    Published Date: July 15, 2015
    Duration: 01:09:45
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 85: Preparing Students of Color for the MFA: Advice, Reflections, and Methodologies

    (Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Tonya Hegamin, Patrick Rosal, Joanna Sit, Leah Vernon) Writers of various ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds discuss their experience in MFA programs as students and teachers of creative writing. The panel will share their experiences, discuss coping mechanisms and insights they learned about themselves as writers and finally how those experiences influence their teaching pedagogy.

    Published Date: July 8, 2015
    Duration: 01:03:30
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 84: From Page to Stage: How to Engage with an Audience

    (Jessica Anya Blau, Amber Tamblyn, Justin Taylor, Stacie Williams, Adam Wilson) Four authors discuss what they've learned from their time on the road. Sharing experiences from their most memorable events, whether reading to a crowd of three or three hundred, participating in a nudist colony, book club discussion, poetry readings, or a dramatic performance, these authors will reinforce the importance of having an engaging and personal experience regardless of audience size, venue, or awareness.

    Published Date: July 1, 2015
    Duration: 01:11:29
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 83: Finding Voice with Roxane Gay, Pablo Medina, and Michael Thomas, Sponsored by Grove/Atlantic Press

    (Bob Shacochis, Michael Thomas, Roxane Gay, John Freeman, Pablo Medina) A panel featuring three incredible, diverse Grove voices: cultural critic, essayist, and novelist, Roxane Gay; poet and novelist Pablo Medina, and IMPAC award winner Michael Thomas. Together, these authors will discuss their writing processes and read from new and/or forthcoming work. The conversation promises a range of thought, experience and opinion that will be invaluable to audience members who are there to learn about craft and be exposed to new and varied writing.The conversation will be moderated by author, literary critic, and former Granta editor, John Freeman.

    Published Date: June 25, 2015
    Duration: 00:57:09
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 82: Charles Wright at 80: A Celebration of Poetry and Teaching

    (John Casteen, Jennifer Chang, Dave Lucas, Mary Szybist) Four students of Charles Wright reflect on his influence on three generations of poets, and read selected poems that have proven durable and instructive in their own writing and pedagogy. Wright's presence as a teaching practitioner is remarkable because he taught so energetically while holding the pace and discipline of his own poetic practice. Few other teaching poets have so clearly modeled the principles he laid out for his students and composed such a remarkable body of work.

    Published Date: June 17, 2015
    Duration: 00:51:54
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 11, 2015

    Episode 81: The Meridel Le Sueur Essay: Sixteen Years of Water~Stone Review

    (Suzanne Paola Antonetta, Linda Hogan, Honor Moore, Mary Rockcastle, Lidia Yuknavitch) Fall 2014 marks the 16th anniversary of the annual Meridel Le Sueur Essay in Water~Stone Review. A Minnesota journalist, fiction writer, essayist, and poet, Meridel Le Sueur’s work paid witness to the central economic, political, ecological, and social realities of the century. She wrote that the writer must go "all the way, with full belief, into the darkness"; Four award-winning writers will read from their essays.

    Published Date: June 10, 2015
    Duration: 01:09:52
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 9, 2015

    Episode 80: Rejection! Everything You Always Wanted to Know (But Were Afraid to Ask)

    (David Baker, Jill Bialosky, MB Caschetta, Rob Spillman, Melissa Stein) Top editors from W. W. Norton, Tin House, and the Kenyon Review join emerging writers (including a literary-rejection blog author) to dish about exactly how submissions are evaluated, what it's like to rebuff so many labors of love, the mysterious hierarchy of rejection slips, whether and how the best work really gets published, tips to avoid surefire rejection - and how to maintain faith in your work and your voice even when rejections keep piling up. Audience questions encouraged!

    Published Date: June 3, 2015
    Duration: 01:10:18
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 79: Four Weddings and an Inauguration: The Occasional Poem

    (Liz Ahl, Richard Blanco, CM Burroughs, Rita Dove, Ann Hudson) Your sister asks you to write a poem for her wedding. Your president asks you to write a poem for his inauguration. How might your work in response to requests of such seemingly different weight or scope be somewhat similar with respect to audience, performance, and aesthetic? Why have certain poems endured beyond the occasions for which they were written? This panel, featuring an editor, an inaugural poet, and a former poet laureate, examines the occasional poem from a variety of perspectives.

    Published Date: May 27, 2015
    Duration: 01:07:27
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Minneapolis Convention Center | April 10, 2015

    Episode 78: Argonaut, Citizen, Empathy, Inoculation: New Nonfiction

    (Eula Biss, Leslie Jamison, Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine) New nonfiction and the essay are reaching new aesthetic heights and receiving unprecedented readership in the next generations after Didion and Sontag. These four award-winning writers are at the forefront of new nonfiction writing. They will discuss the role of the first-person point of view, lyric innovation, and the essayist as citizen, as well as their own recent works confronting queer identity, race, empathy, and vaccination. Introduced by Fiona McCrae, publisher of Graywolf Press.

    Published Date: May 20, 2015
    Duration: 01:00:30
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Washington State Convention Center | February 28, 2014

    Episode 77: Image & Idea: Rachel Kushner & Colm Tóibín, a Reading and Conversation, Sponsored by The Center for Fiction

    (Noreen Tomassi, Colm Tóibín, Rachel Kushner) Colm Tóibín (The Testament of Mary) described Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers as, “an ambitious and serious American novel. The scope is wide. The political and the personal are locked in a deep and fascinating embrace.” And in Tóibín's latest novel he takes on nothing less than the Mother of Christ. Hear these two authors read and speak about the larger ideas that inspired them and the need for scope in the contemporary novel.

    Published Date: September 3, 2014
    Duration: 01:11:14
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Washington State Convention Center | February 28, 2014

    Episode 76: A Reading and Conversation with Ben Fountain and Amy Tan, Sponsored by the National Book Critics Circle

    (Jane Ciabattari, Amy Tan, Ben Fountain) Two National Book Critics Circle award-honored novelists, Ben Fountain and Amy Tan, read from their work and talk with NBCC Vice President/Online Jane Ciabattari about inspiration, research, readers, awards, the unique challenges of first novels, and the imaginative process that gives their work originality. Since 1974, the National Book Critics Circle awards have honored the best literature published in English. These are the only awards chosen by the critics themselves.

    Published Date: August 20, 2014
    Duration: 01:12:42
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Washington State Convention Center | February 27, 2014

    Episode 75: A Reading and Conversation with David Guterson and Erik Larson, Sponsored by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and Seattle Arts & Lectures

    (David Guterson, Erik Larson, Peter Mountford) Authors David Guterson and Erik Larson read from recent books and engage in a discussion moderated by Peter Mountford on their work, genre overlap, and the literary arts in the Pacific Northwest.

    Published Date: August 13, 2014
    Duration: 01:08:45
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Washington State Convention Center | March 1, 2014

    Episode 74: A Reading and Conversation with Gish Jen and Tobias Wolff, Sponsored by the Oregon State University School of Writing, Literature, and Film

    (Gish Jen, Jess Walter, Tobias Wolff) Gish Jen, author of The Love Wife and Typical American, and Tobias Wolff, author of This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army, present readings of their award-winning work, followed by a discussion moderated by Jess Walter.

    Published Date: August 6, 2014
    Duration: 01:04:30
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Washington State Convention Center | February 28, 2014

    Episode 73: Author & Editor: The Relationship that Builds a Book

    (Noreen Tomassi, Jess Walter, Chuck Palahniuk, Gerry Howard, Calvert Morgan) Award-winning authors Jess Walter and Chuck Palahniuk sit down with editor Calvert Morgan of HarperCollins, who edits Walter's work, and Monica Drake, who is in a writing group with Pahalniuk, to discuss the alchemy behind creating such great works of fiction as "Beautiful Ruins" and "Doomed." More than just a conversation on the nuts and bolts of getting a book published, they will look at how the author/editor relationship affects the novel on the shelf.

    Published Date: July 30, 2014
    Duration: 01:01:01
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Washington State Convention Center | February 28, 2014

    Episode 72: Natalie Diaz, Lucia Perillo, and Dean Young: Reading and Conversation, Sponsored by Copper Canyon Press

    (Michael Wiegers, Dean Young, Natalie Diaz, Lucia Perillo) Natalie Diaz, author of When My Brother Was an Aztec, joins two of contemporary literature's leading poets, Lucia Perillo and Dean Young, for a reading and conversation. Perillo is a Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Young is the current Texas Poet Laureate, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Griffin Poetry Prize. The event concludes with a conversation between the poets, moderated by the Executive Editor of Copper Canyon Press, Michael Wiegers.

    Published Date: July 23, 2014
    Duration: 01:16:19
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Washington State Convention Center | March 1, 2014

    Episode 71: Song of the Reed: The Poetry of Rumi, Sponsored by Poets House

    (Anne Waldman, Brad Gooch, Coleman Barks) Thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi is now the most popular poet in the United States. In this event, leading Rumi interpreter, Coleman Barks, reads his beloved versions of the Sufi poet’s verse, biographer Brad Gooch shares research into Rumi’s lived experience, and poet Anne Waldman reflects on Rumi’s contribution to poetry’s ecstatic tradition.

    Published Date: July 16, 2014
    Duration: 01:09:13
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Washington State Convention Center | February 28, 2014

    Episode 70: A Reading and Conversation with Chris Abani and Chang-rae Lee

    (Chris Abani, Chang-rae Lee, Steph Opitz) Sponsored by the University of Washington Bothell MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics. Chris Abani, author of numerous works of prose and poetry, and Chang-rae Lee, author of the novels Native Speaker and The Surrendered, will present readings of their award-winning work, followed by a discussion moderated by Steph Opitz.

    Published Date: June 25, 2014
    Duration: 01:04:46
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Boston, MA | March 9, 2013

    Episode 69: Academy of American Poets Presents Lucie Brock-Broido and Anne Carson

    (Lucie Brock-Broido, Anne Carson, Jennifer Benka) Award-winning poet Lucie Brock-Broido, author of Trouble in Mind, and acclaimed poet, essayist, and translator Anne Carson, author of Autobiography of Red, present readings from their respective work.

    Published Date: October 16, 2013
    Duration: 00:55:27
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Boston, MA | March 8, 2013

    Episode 68: Illness as Muse: Ten Years of the Bellevue Literary Review

    (Rafael Campo, Hal Sirowitz, David Oshinsky, Jacob Freedman, Amanda Auchter) The Bellevue Literary Review is the first literary journal to be published from a medical center. Based in the oldest public hospital in the country, and perhaps the most legendary, the BLR has ushered in an entire field of literary medical writing. Now at the ten-year mark, the BLR illuminates the human condition through the prism of health and healing, illness and disease, and relationships to the body and mind. BLR writers Rafael Campo, Hal Sirowitz, David Oshinsky, Jacob Freedman, and Amanda Auchter explore these themes via fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

    Published Date: October 9, 2013
    Duration: 01:07:06
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Boston, MA | March 8, 2013

    Episode 67: A Tribute to Seamus Heaney

    (Elise Paschen, Frank Bidart, Askold Melnyczuk, Tom Sleigh, Tracy K. Smith) This tribute celebrates the work of Seamus Heaney, one of the major poets of our time. Heaney, the author of more than twenty volumes of poetry, essays, and translations, received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His most recent books include Human Chain and District and Circle, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize. This panel of colleagues, friends, and former students, who knew Heaney during his “Boston” years, will share anecdotes, offer critical analyses, and read from his poetry and prose.

    Published Date: October 2, 2013
    Duration: 01:10:29
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  • Boston, MA | March 9, 2013

    Episode 66: Andre Dubus III & Edith Pearlman: A Reading & Conversation, Sponsored by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation

    (Mary Kay Zuravleff, Andre Dubus III, Edith Pearlman) Andre Dubus III, New York Times best-selling author of The House of Sand and Fog, and Edith Pearlman, author of National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Binocular Vision, read and discuss their work with Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of The Bowl is Already Broken and a PEN/Faulkner board member.

    Published Date: July 24, 2013
    Duration: 01:13:36
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  • Chicago, IL | March 2, 2012

    Episode 65: PSA Presents: A Reading and Conversation with C.K. Williams

    (Alice Quinn, C.K. Williams) A reading by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C.K. Williams, followed by an interview with Poetry Society of America Executive Director, Alice Quinn.

    Published Date: July 17, 2013
    Duration: 00:58:24
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  • Chicago, IL | March 1, 2012

    Episode 64: Flash Fiction: How and Why to Teach It

    (Kona Morris, Jayne Anne Phillips, Tom Hazuka, Robert Shapard, Kim Chinquee) If we can accept that flash fiction is indeed its own distinct genre, then a discussion remains about how and why to teach it. Does it deserve its own course? What is the flash canon? How can the conventions of poetry and prose apply? What does the accessibility of its short form offer the classroom? In this panel, a variety of instructors, from MFA directors to adjuncts, as well as writers and editors specializing in the genre, will discuss the methodology and canon for teaching flash fiction.

    Published Date: July 3, 2013
    Duration: 01:13:21
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  • Boston, MA | March 8, 2013

    Episode 63: Language at the Breaking Point

    (Kwame Dawes, Jorie Graham, Terrance Hayes) Sponsored by Blue Flower Arts. Pulitzer Prize-winner Jorie Graham and National Book Award-winner Terrance Hayes stretch language past the barriers of mind and limitations of personal experience to reinstate a kind of dignity to the world. Their creative tensions puncture the commonplace allowing the familiar to dislocate, laying bare our tenuous connection to life. Yet grace and a vivid, wakeful presence abide. Their poems demonstrate how the excavation of language itself can shape new possibilities for imagination to evolve.

    Published Date: June 5, 2013
    Duration: 01:33:04
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  • Chicago, IL | March 3, 2012

    Episode 62: Charting Unmarked Terrain: Fiction at the Borderland

    (Alison Granucci, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Linda Hogan, Pam Houston, Mat Johnson) Sponsored by Blue Flower Arts. The human mind can be as wild as the landscape it inhabits. Through probing examination of notions of race, ruminations on identity, and social and historical commentary, these acclaimed writers chart the hidden dimensions of what it means to be human. using ecologically and socially conscious narratives, they explore our connections to the earth and to one another, reconciling loss and redemption.

    Published Date: May 29, 2013
    Duration: 01:10:07
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  • Chicago, IL | March 1, 2012

    Episode 61: A Reading and Conversation with Alice Notley, Sponsored by Wesleyan University Press

    (Stephanie Elliott, Alice Notley, Steven Evans) A reading by Alice Notley, followed by a Q&A guided by poet/scholar Steven Evans. Notley has two new books: The Songs and Stories of the Ghouls (Wesleyan UP), a work of poetry that gives voice to victims of genocide—both ancient and contemporary; and a poetical fantasy Culture of One (Penguin). Evans, who has interviewed Notley in the past, has a keen understanding of her work. The discussion will allow the audience to gain a deeper understanding of her complex poetry and writing process.

    Published Date: May 22, 2013
    Duration: 01:14:40
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  • Chicago, IL | March 3, 2012

    Episode 60: The Need to Speak: Writing the Political Poem

    (Joe Wilkins, Matthew Zapruder, Robert Wrigley, Rachel Zucker, C.K. Williams) The politics of our age are rabid, dazzling, blinkered, ridiculous—yet they matter, deeply, in all our daily lives. We click the television over to the latest protests in Wisconsin, we open a newspaper and try to make sense of this latest war, and we feel called speak. How do we do so honestly and with conviction, nuance, complexity? Five poets take on these questions and more as they read from and discuss their own work and that of other poets who’ve successfully written political poems.

    Published Date: May 15, 2013
    Duration: 01:13:24
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  • Chicago, IL | February 29, 2012

    Episode 59: An Interview with Jennifer Egan by Jessica Anthony

    Jennifer Egan is the author of the novels Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award., The Keep, and A Visit from the Goon Squad, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

    Published Date: May 10, 2013
    Duration: 00:14:10
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Boston, MA | March 9, 2013

    Episode 58: What Is Criticism? With NBCC Winners and Finalists

    (Stephen Burt, Vivian Gornick, James Wood, Clare Cavanagh, Parul Sehgal) What does it take to change discussion—or start discussion—around a novel, a poem, a play, a career? How to combine instruction with delight? Four leading literary and cultural critics, winners or finalists for the National Book Critic Circle’s awards, discuss the art of writing about books. These winners and finalists differ in background and experience; all represent criticism as a lively, challenging activity, one that can and must find something new to say.

    Published Date: May 8, 2013
    Duration: 01:08:45
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  • Chicago, IL | March 3, 2012

    Episode 57: PSA Presents: A Reading and Conversation with Mary Jo Bang and Ed Roberson

    (Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Mary Jo Bang, Ed Roberson) Two contemporary masters will read, followed by a discussion about craft and influences, moderated by PSA Programs Director Darrel Alejandro Holnes, with questions from the audience.

    Published Date: May 1, 2013
    Duration: 01:09:49
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Chicago, IL | March 2, 2012

    Episode 56: A Reading and Conversation with Luis J. Rodriguez and Dagoberto Gilb, Sponsored by Macondo Writers' Workshop

    (Dagoberto Gilb, Luis J. Rodriguez, John Phillip Santos) The event will be a reading of selected and new works by two of the most important American writers reflecting on the experiences and story tradition of the Latino community. Both Luis J. Rodriguez and Dagoberto Gilb are also involved in innovative initiatives in creative writing education and community efforts committed to positive social change. Question and answer with discussion will follow.

    Published Date: April 26, 2013
    Duration: 01:07:55
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  • Boston, MA | March 7, 2013

    Episode 55: 2013 Keynote, A Conversation Between Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott, Moderated by Rosanna Warren

    (Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Rosanna Warren) Sponsored by Bath Spa University. Celebrated poet and translator Seamus Heaney is the author of more than twenty volumes of poetry, essays, and translations, including Opened Ground; District and Circle, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; Human Chain; and Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001. Poet, playwright, and essayist Derek Walcott is the author of eight collections of plays, a book of essays, and fourteen poetry collections, including Omeros, Tiepolo's Hound, and most recently, White Egrets. Playwright and novelist Steve May, Director of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, will introduce the two Nobel Prize-winning poets, who will present readings of their work. A discussion will follow, moderated by the poet and critic Rosanna Warren, author of Ghost in a Red Hat.

    Published Date: April 24, 2013
    Duration: 01:00:38
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Chicago, IL | March 3, 2012

    Episode 54: An Interview with Carl Phillips by Brian Brodeur

    Carl Phillips is a poet, critic, and translator whose books include Double Shadow and Coin of the Realm. He teaches at Washington University.

    Published Date: October 10, 2012
    Duration: 00:35:53
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  • Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago | March 3, 2012

    Episode 53: Literature and Evil, Sponsored by The Center for Fiction

    (Paul Harding, Ha Jin, Marilynne Robinson, Noreen Tomassi) Acclaimed literary fiction writers who have unforgettably illuminated the nature of evil will read from their work and then engage in a discussion of their approaches to this topic well as their thoughts on other writers' work in this subject area, followed by an audience Q&A.

    Published Date: October 3, 2012
    Duration: 01:10:07
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • International Ballroom South, Hilton Chicago | March 3, 2012

    Episode 52: A Reading and Conversation with Eileen Myles & Monica Youn, Sponsored by VIDA: Women in Literary Arts

    (Erin Belieu, Cate Marvin, Eileen Myles, Monica Youn) Prominent poet and literary activist Eileen Myles and recent National Book Award finalist Monica Youn will present readings from their respective work to be followed by a conversation on feminist poetics with VIDA co-founders and poets Erin Belieu and Cate Marvin. AWP participants are encouraged to join a brief Q&A period to be held afterwards.

    Published Date: September 26, 2012
    Duration: 01:05:38
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Chicago, IL | March 2, 2012

    Episode 51: An Interview with Aleksandar Hemon by Jessica Anthony

    Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, and New York Magazine's No. 1 Book of the Year, as well as three short story collections: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles. Stories, articles, and reviews have appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, Paris Review, Granta, TriQuarterly, New York Times, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the MacArthur Foundation "genius grant."

    Published Date: September 19, 2012
    Duration: 00:17:41
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • International Ballroom South, Hilton Chicago | March 1, 2012

    Episode 50: Political Poetry: America and Abroad

    (Nick Flynn, Matthea Harvey, Jeff Shotts, Tom Sleigh, Jeffrey Yang) In a year of national election and in another year of war and human rights violations, we turn to poetry for... what, exactly? Four poets offer their own responses to the role of the poet in confronting national and international political situations--from the so-called war on terror to government-sanctioned uses of torture, from resistance movements to the political imprisonment of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Liu Xiaobo.

    Published Date: September 5, 2012
    Duration: 01:11:26
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Continental B, Hilton Chicago | March 3, 2012

    Episode 49: Who Doesn't Want to Be Popular?: Adventures in Teaching With, For, Around, and Through Commercial Fiction

    (Scott Blackwood, Lori Rader Day, Tod Goldberg, Kat Falls, Mary Anne Mohanraj) The writing is what matters—or is it? The longstanding argument between literary and genre writers proves that, sometimes, it's about more than the words on the page. Writers and teachers of both commercial and literary fiction discuss how that battle plays out in the creative writing classroom. Should students be allowed to write whatever they want? How do we teach students who write in genres we don't read? What lessons might come from genre-bending? What resources do we turn to?

    Published Date: August 29, 2012
    Duration: 01:10:47
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • The 2012 AWP Conference in Chicago | March 1, 2012

    Episode 48: An Interview with Claudia Emerson by Brian Brodeur

    Claudia Emerson, former Poet Laureate of Virginia, is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection Late Wife. She also writes songs and performs with her husband, kent Ippolito, a musician who plays bluegrass, rock, folk, jazz, blues, and ragtime.

    Published Date: August 15, 2012
    Duration: 00:29:09
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • International Ballroom South, Hilton Chicago | March 2, 2012

    Episode 47: New Prose from Northwestern University: A Reading

    (Eula Biss, Stuart Dybek, Marya Hornbacher, John Keene, Alex Kotlowitz) Writers who teach in Northwestern University's English Department, the Medill School of Journalism, and the MA/MFA in Creative Writing program will read new work. Their writing varies widely in subject and style, but they all investigate the world and themselves. Their fiction and nonfiction are based on research, reporting, reflection, remembering, and imagining.

    Published Date: August 8, 2012
    Duration: 0:53:53
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago | March 1, 2012

    Episode 46: Page Meets Stage. Sponsored by Blue Flower Arts

    (Roger Bonair-Agard, Mark Doty, Taylor Mali, Marilyn Nelson, Molly Peacock) Taylor Mali and the Bowery Poetry Club come to AWP with the acclaimed Page Meets Stage series. Spoken word poetry and written poetry have inched closer in recent years, but there is still a big gap between poets who write to be read and those who recite to be heard. Or is there? Join us as performance poets (Mali, Peacock, and Bonair-Agard) and page poets (Doty and Nelson) are paired together and go head-to-head, poem-for-poem, revealing the playful give-and-take between the page and the stage.

    Published Date: August 1, 2012
    Duration: 01:04:39
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • The 2012 AWP Conference in Chicago | March 3, 2012

    Episode 45: An Interview with Luis Urrea by Jessica Anthony

    Luis Alberto Urrea's fourteen books include The Devil's Highway and Beside the Lake of Burning, and prize-winning poetry books, Fever Dreams and Ghost Sickness. Awards include the Kiriama Pacific Rim Prize and American Book Awards. He is Professor of Creative Writing at University of Illinois, Chicago.

    Published Date: July 25, 2012
    Duration: 00:29:09
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago | March 3, 2012

    Episode 44: Academy of American Poets Presents Nikky Finney and Lyn Hejinian

    (Nikky Finney, Lyn Hejinian, Tree Swenson) The Academy of American Poets presents an event featuring two prestigious poets, Nikky Finney and Lyn Hejinian, who will be reading their own work.

    Published Date: July 11, 2012
    Duration: 00:59:18
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • International Ballroom South, Hilton Chicago | March 2, 2012

    Episode 43: Finding Home—Immigrant Voices in American Literature

    (Stuart Dybek, Aleksandar Hemon, Nami Mun, Noreen Tomassi) The session will involve readings and discussion with three leading authors who will illuminate how immigrant writings have influenced American literature and culture over the last fifty years.

    Published Date: June 28, 2012
    Duration: 01:03:47
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • This interview occurred at the 2012 AWP Conference in Chicago | March 2, 2012

    Episode 42: An Interview with Kathleen Graber by Brian Brodeur

    Kathleen Graber's second collection of poems, The Eternal City, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critic's Circle Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award. She teaches in the creative writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

    Published Date: June 20, 2012
    Duration: 00:29:46
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago | March 2, 2012

    Episode 41: A Reading and Conversation with Jaimy Gordon and Rebecca Skloot

    (Jaimy Gordon, Donna Seaman, Rebecca Skloot) A reading and conversation by best-selling authors Jaimy Gordon and Rebecca Skloot. The conversation will be moderated by critic and editor Donna Seaman.

    Published Date: June 6, 2012
    Duration: 00:29:46
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago | March 1, 2012

    Episode 40: Nikki Giovanni: A Cave Canem Legacy Conversation

    (Nikki Giovanni, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Alison Meyers) Called the Princess of Black Poetry in her early career, Nikki Giovanni has for four decades engaged deeply with the political and the personal. A popular poet whose versatile work inspires and challenges both adults and youth, she has received over twenty honorary degrees and numerous literary awards. Following Ms. Giovanni's brief reading, Thomas Sayers Ellis will conduct a wide-ranging conversation with the distinguished poet who declares, "Writing is... what I do to justify the air I breathe."

    Published Date: May 30, 2012
    Duration: 01:08:27
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago | March 2, 2012

    Episode 39: National Book Critics Circle Celebrates Award-Winning Authors

    (Bonnie Jo Campbell, Jane Ciabattari, Jennifer Egan, Jane Smiley, Darin Strauss, Isabel Wilkerson) A reading by Bonnie Jo Campbell (AWP Prize, 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist in Fiction), Jennifer Egan (2011 National Book Critics Circle and Pulitzer Prize in Fiction), Jane Smiley (1992 National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize in Fiction), Darin Strauss (2011 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction), and Isabel Wilkerson (2011 National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction and Pulitzer Prize Winner in Journalism).

    Published Date: May 16, 2012
    Duration: 00:51:57
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • International Ballroom North & South, Hilton Chicago | March 2, 2012

    Episode 38: A Reading and Conversation with U.K. and U.S. Poets Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Philip Levine, Sponsored by the Poetry Foundation

    (Carol Ann Duffy, Philip Levine, Don Share) The Poetry Foundation presents a reading and conversation by the current United Kingdom and United States poets laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Philip Levine. The event will be introduced and moderated by Poetry magazine senior editor, Don Share.

    Published Date: May 9, 2012
    Duration: 01:34:07
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Roosevelt University Auditorium Theatre | March 1, 2012

    Episode 37: 2012 Keynote Address by Margaret Atwood

    (Margaret Atwood) Keynote Address. Sponsored by Roosevelt University MFA in Creative Writing.

    Published Date: May 2, 2012
    Duration: 00:27:22
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Regency Ballroom, Omni Shoreham Hotel | February 3, 2011

    Episode 36: Academy of American Poets Presents Charles Wright.

    (Tree Swenson, Charles Wright) A reading featuring readings by an award winning poet, Charles Wright. Presented by the Academy of American Poets.

    Published Date: October 19, 2011
    Duration: 0:27:28
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  • Grand Ballroom East, Hilton | February 2, 2008

    Episode 35: Poets in the Sheep Meadow Fold

    (John Ashbery, Christopher Bakken, Suzanne Gardinier, Stanley Moss, Hermine Pinson, Yerra Sugarman) Celebrated poets from the catalogue of Sheep Meadow Press, including publisher Stanley Moss, will read from some of their recent works. Poets will include John Ashbery reading his translations of the great, recently deceased, French poet Pierre Martory, Christopher Bakken, Suzanne Gardinier, Hermine Pinson, and Yerra Sugarman .

    Published Date: October 12, 2011
    Duration: 1:08:29
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Delaware Suite Room, Marriott Wardman Park | February 5, 2011

    Episode 34: Like It's Still Going On: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Reading & Discussion

    (Frank Bidart, Sally Dawidoff, 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.

    Published Date: October 5, 2011
    Duration: 1:05:45
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Metropolitan East, Sheraton | February 2, 2008

    Episode 33: A Reading by Cynthia Ozick & Phillip Lopate

    (Philip Gerard, Rebecca Lee, Phillip Lopate, Cynthia Ozick) Sponsored by The University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Readings by Cynthia Ozick and Phillip Lopate. Introductions by Philip Gerard and Rebecca Lee.

    Published Date: September 28, 2011
    Duration: 1:08:02
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Centennial Ballroom, Hyatt Regency Denver | April 9, 2010

    Episode 32: The Southern Review 75th Anniversary Reading

    (Steve Almond, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Beth Ann Fennelly, David Kirby, Jeanne Leiby, Sydney Lea) Founded in 1935 by Robert Penn Warren at Louisiana State University, the Southern Review celebrates seventy-five years of publishing the best contemporary fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by the world's most accomplished writers.

    Published Date: September 21, 2011
    Duration: 1:12:32
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Mineral Hall, Hyatt Regency Denver | April 9, 2010

    Episode 31: Translation as Collaboration / Collaboration as Translation

    (Amaranth Borsuk, Kate Durbin, Lara Glenum, Gabriela Jauregui, Mira Rosenthal) We will consider the ways in which translation is a collaborative practice, both between the author (living or deceased) and translator and also among co-translators. We will also consider how collaborative work often involves acts of translation. Is collaboration always already translational? Is translation always necessarily collaborative? The panelists work both as translators and poets. They have collaborated variously with one another and will discuss intersections among these projects.

    Published Date: September 14, 2011
    Duration: 0:50:35
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  • Centennial Ballroom, Hyatt Regency Denver | April 8, 2010

    Episode 30: A Connoisseur of Waves—Dave Hickey, MacArthur Fellow in Art and Cultural Criticism

    (Dave Hickey, Douglas Unger) Sponsored by University of Nevada Las Vegas. A world-class writer about art and culture reads from his cutting-edge Connoisseur of Waves, essays on art and democracy. Author of seven books, and recently featured in Newsweek as an iconoclastic voice in contemporary art, Hickey is always engaging, provocative, and highly acclaimed for his mastery of the language.

    Published Date: September 7, 2011
    Duration: 0:37:13
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Diplomat Ballroom, Omni Shoreham Hotel | February 3, 2011

    Episode 29: Moby Dick's Descendants: A Cross-Genre Reading of Works Inspired by the Great American Novel

    (Marci Johnson, Sena Jeter Naslund, Alan Michael Parker, Dan Beachy-Quick) Melville's Moby-Dick or, The Whale, considered by many to be the Great American Novel, has inspired numerous writers over the last 160 years. The three distinguished writers on this panel have each written works in conversation with Melville's: Dan Beachy-Quick's A Whaler's Dictionary, Sena Jeter Naslund's Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel, and Alan Michael Parker's A Tale of a Whale. These novelists and poets will read and then discuss her/his relationship to the 19th century classic.

    Published Date: August 31, 2011
    Duration: 0:59:57
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Regency Ballroom, Omni Shoreham Hotel | February 3, 2011

    Episode 28: The PSA Presents: A Reading and Interview with Stephen Dunn

    (Robert N. Casper, Stephen Dunn) Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Dunn will read his poetry, followed by an interview with Poetry Society of America Programs Director Robert N. Casper.

    Published Date: August 25, 2011
    Duration: 1:05:06
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Regency Ballroom, Omni Shoreham Hotel | February 4, 2011

    Episode 27: Cisneros and Santos Uncensored: A Conversation with Sandra Cisneros and John Phillip Santos

    (Sandra Cisneros, John Phillip Santos) Sponsored by the Macondo Writers' Workshop. Two amigos talk about the (very) personal and political. They will say things that they've never said before in public or in print.

    Published Date: August 17, 2011
    Duration: 1:11:26
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Regency Ballroom, Omni Shoreham Hotel | February 4, 2011

    Episode 26: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Poetry Reading

    (Andrew Hudgins, Linda Gregerson, Rodney Jones, Maurice Manning, Leslie Harrison) To celebrate Michael Collier's first ten years editing the poetry series at HMH, five of his authors will read. Hudgins will moderate. Michael, a professor at the University of Maryland, also directs the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Under his editorship, the press has produced a National Book Award Finalist, and won three Kingsley Tufts Awards, the Poets' Prize, a Pulitzer Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

    Published Date: August 10, 2011
    Duration: 0:57:18
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  • Mineral Hall, Hyatt Regency Denver | April 10, 2010

    Episode 25: The Past Is Another Country: Writing Historical Fiction

    (Cynthia Mahamdi, Philip Gerard, Ron Hansen) The appeal of combining history and storytelling is evident in the popularity of historical fiction and films. But this is an uneasy union, much debated by historians. Three historical novelists share their ideas on the processes, ethics, and challenges of this genre, including doing research and transforming data intro drama, the ethics of key decision-making processes, and the special challenges of writing historicals set in Non-Western cultures.

    Published Date: August 3, 2011
    Duration: 1:13:40
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Centennial Ballroom, Hyatt Regency Denver | April 9, 2010

    Episode 24: A Reading and Conversation with Rita Dove

    (Kyle Dargan, Rita Dove) Sponsored by The Poetry Foundation. Rita Dove reads from her work. The reading is followed by a conversation with poet Kyle Dargan.

    Published Date: July 27, 2011
    Duration: 1:23:33
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Mineral Hall, Hyatt Regency Denver | April 8, 2010

    Episode 23: Writing on the Margins: Community Outreach in Shelters and Correctional Facilities

    (Christopher Arnold, Ross Carper, Ryan Downey, Nicole Piasecki, Sami Schalk) This panel offers strategies for expanding outreach programs to shelters and correctional facilities. Coordinators from University of Notre Dame, The Denver Writing Project, and Eastern Washington University will speak to the rewards and challenges of working with these traditionally under-served populations, and share procedures for launching similar programs. We share the philosophy that creative writers can affect social change by bringing literature to the margins of our communities.

    Published Date: July 20, 2011
    Duration: 1:03:34
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • 2011 AWP Conference in Washington, DC. | February 4, 2011

    Episode 22: Southern Comfort from a Plastic Cup: A Conversation with Dorianne Laux by Brian Brodeur

    Dorianne Laux's fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon, is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award. Laux is also author of Awake; What We Carry, finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle Award; and Smoke. Her fifth collection, The Book of Men, will be published by W.W. Norton in February, 2011.

    Published Date: July 13, 2011
    Duration: 0:32:48
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Regency Ballroom, Omni Shoreham Hotel | February 3, 2011

    Episode 21: A Reading and Conversation with Rae Armantrout

    (Rae Armantrout, Craig Morgan Teicher) Sponsored by Wesleyan University Press. Ron Silliman said, "trying to read a book by Rae Armantrout in a single sitting is like trying to drink a bowl of diamonds. What's inside is all so shiny & clear & even tiny that it appears perfectly do-able. But the stones are so hard & their edges so chiseled that the instant you begin they'll start to rip your insides apart." Join us as Rae reads from Money Shot, her follow up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Versed, also recipient of the NBCC Award, followed by a conversation with poet and critic, Craig Teicher.

    Published Date: July 6, 2011
    Duration: 1:00:06
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • 2011 AWP Conference in Washington, DC. | February 4, 2011

    Episode 20: No One Here Ever Wishes You Happiness: A Conversation with Aimee Nezhukumatathil by Brian Brodeur

    Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the prize-winning poetry collections, Miracle Fruit and At the Drive-In Volcano and the forthcoming Lucky Fish, all from Tupelo Press. Other awards for her writing include an NEA Fellowship in poetry and the Pushcart Prize. She is Associate Professor of English at State University of New York-Fredonia, where she received the Hagan Award and the SUNY-wide Chancellor's Medal.

    Published Date: June 29, 2011
    Duration: 0:37:30
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Centennial Ballroom, Hyatt Regency Denver | April 8, 2010

    Episode 19: The Real and the Imagined: Easing the Boundaries Between Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry

    (Cornelius Eady, Danzy Senna, David Shields, Michael Thomas, Ofer Ziv) The task of writing one's life into a narrative, fictional and nonfictional, helps with our exploration of personal identity, the search for self, and our understanding of the world. These sharp and humane authors traverse freely from memoir to fiction and poetry. Through their cross-genre investigation we see what is gained and what is lost in writing the narrative from the perspective of each form—and that what ultimately drives the search is imagination itself. Come listen as panelists ease the boundaries of genre, delving into issues of race, poverty, the urban community, marriage, and divorce, while incorporating the past, both theirs and not theirs, both real and imaginary, into their writings.

    Published Date: June 22, 2011
    Duration: 1:13:48
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Marriott Ballroom, Marriott Wardman Park | February 5, 2011

    Episode 18: A Reading and Conversation with Amy Hempel and Gary Shteyngart

    (Amy Hempel, Gary Shtengart) Sponsored by The George Washington University. 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.

    Published Date: June 15, 2011
    Duration: 1:21:39
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Regency Ballroom, Omni Shoreham Hotel | February 5, 2011

    Episode 17: How a Poem Happens: Five Poets Explore How Their Poems Were Made

    (Adrian Blevins, Brian Brodeur, Bob Hicok, Dorianne Laux, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Eric Pankey) 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.

    Published Date: June 8, 2011
    Duration: 1:02:23
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • 2011 AWP Conference in Washington, DC. | February 4, 2011

    Episode 16: You Still Want the People to Dance: A Conversation with Terrance Hayes by Brian Brodeur

    Terrance Hayes is the author of Lighthead, Wind in a Box, and Muscular Music, as well as other books of poetry. Hayes is the recipient of many honors and awards including a Whiting Writers Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a National Poetry Series award, a Pushcart Prize, a Best American Poetry selection, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a grant from the Guggenheim Foudation.

    Published Date: June 1, 2011
    Duration: 0:39:52
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Marriott Ballroom, Marriott Wardman Park | February 4, 2011

    Episode 15: A Reading by Junot Díaz

    (Junot Díiaz) Sponsored by Georgia College & State University / Arts & Letters. Junot Diaz was born in 1968 in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize; the National Book Critics Circle Award; the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. Diaz has been awarded the Eugene McDermott Award, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, a Lila Acheson Wallace Reader's Digest Award, the 2002 PEN/Malamud Award, the 2003 U.S./Japan Creative Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Rudge (1948), and Nancy Allen Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    Published Date: May 25, 2011
    Duration: 0:35:13
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • 2011 AWP Conference in Washington, DC. | February 4, 2011

    Episode 14: Light, the Common Denominator: A Conversation with Eric Pankey by Brian Brodeur

    Eric Pankey, the Heritage Chair in Writing at George Mason University, is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems 1984-2008.

    Published Date: April 26, 2011
    Duration: 0:41:59
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • 2011 AWP Conference in Washington, DC. | February 4, 2011

    Episode 13: Borg Poetics: A Conversation with Adrian Blevins by Brian Brodeur

    Adrian Blevins's The Brass Girl Brouhaha won the 2004 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Blevins is also the recipient of a 2004 Rona Jaffe Writer's Foundation Award and the Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction. A new book, Live from the Homesick Jamboree, is just out from Wesleyan. Blevins teaches at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

    Published Date: April 22, 2011
    Duration: 0:39:27
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Wilson A, B, & C Room, Marriott Wardman Park | February 4, 2011

    Episode 12: Advice to Grantseekers from the National Endowment for the Arts

    (Jon Parrish Peede, Amy Stolls) Staff members from the Literature Division of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will address your questions and provide a status update on agency policies, programs, and initiatives that can have an impact on individuals and arts organizations. Topics covered will include grant opportunities and their deadlines, eligibility, applying online, the review process, and tips for more effective proposals.

    Published Date: March 11, 2011
    Duration: 00:56:11
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Centennial Ballroom, Hyatt Regency Denver | April 9, 2010

    Episode 11: A Reading by George Saunders & Etgar Keret, Sponsored by Wilkes University Low Residency MA/MFA Program in Creative Writing in association with Blue Flower Arts

    (Etgar Keret, George Saunders) A Reading by George Saunders & Etgar Keret.

    Published Date: October 8, 2010
    Duration: 1:08:53
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Mineral Hall, Hyatt Regency Denver | April 9, 2010

    Episode 10: Honoring the Sandhill Crane Migration Annual Literary Tribute

    (Sherwin Bitsui, Cristina Eisenberg, Allison Hedge Coke, Travis Hedge Coke, Wang Ping, Laura Tohe) UNK hosts the Honoring the Sandhill Crane Migration Literary Retreat on the Platte Valley, naming participating writers as Literary Crane Fellows annually. Sandhill Cranes have migrated to this spring apex for sixty million years, thus, traditionally, numerous indigenous eco-philosophies and languages, including written, were justly influenced. The regional apex numbers 600,000 arriving birds. Each panelist will speak toward and share their work as a Crane Fellow in this unique regional miracle.

    Published Date: September 24, 2010
    Duration: 1:09:59
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Mineral Hall, Hyatt Regency Denver | April 8, 2010

    Episode 9: CLMP Keynote Address-Small Press Heaven: Poetics from the Floating World.

    (Jeffrey Lependorf, Anne Waldman.) Performer, professor, editor, cultural activist, and author of over forty books of poetry, Anne Waldman discusses her storied history with independent publishers (with a special-guest musical accompaniment on Japanese bamboo flute!).

    Published Date: July 12, 2010
    Duration: 0:46:09
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Grand Ballroom East, Hilton New York Hotel | January 31, 2008

    Episode 8: Shaping a Short Story Collection

    (Steve Almond, Brian Evenson, Daphne Kalotay, Ellen Litman, Deb Olin Unferth) Short story collections are notoriously hard to get published. Editors complain that collections don't sell. Agents ask for a novel. Magazine articles regularly proclaim that the short story itself is dead. And yet, every year new short story collections come out, win awards, and generate buzz. Some have recurring characters, others are labeled "a novel in stories." Some center on a specific theme, while others are set in a particular location. What makes for a compelling short story collection? What is the best way to arrange the stories? How to develop an arch? The fiction writers on this panel have published one or more short story collections. They will attempt to answer the above questions by sharing their own experiences, discussing their favorite collections, and trying to identify some useful strategies.

    Published Date: October 8, 2009
    Duration: 0:57:14
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago Hotel | February 14, 2009

    Episode 7: Switching Hats: When Poets Write Memoir

    (Nick Flynn, Carolyn Forche, Alison Granucci, Donald Hall, Honor Moore) These renowned writers traverse both in the genre of poetry and creative nonfiction. When poets write memoirs, with voices both similar and different to those in their poems, they go deeper into the narrative thread, remembering and telling, using the memoir as different mode of travel through the creative terrain. Please join us on a journey through faith and sexuality, race and addiction, and testimonies from war prisoners in this celebration of courage and versatility.

    Published Date: September 17, 2009
    Duration: 0:56:53
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Grand Ballroom, Hilton Chicago Hotel | February 14, 2009

    Episode 6: A Reading and Conversation with Charles Baxter

    (Charles Baxter, Allen Gee) A reading with award winning author Charles Baxter followed by a conversation between Charles Baxter and Allen Gee.

    Published Date: September 4, 2009
    Duration: 1:11:52
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Empire Ballroom, Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers | January 31, 2008

    Episode 5: The Poetry of George Herbert: Five Takes by Five Poets

    (David Baker, Linda Gregerson, Carl Phillips, Stanley Plumly, Ann Townsend.) Why does a self-effacing cleric of the 17th century continue to be so avidly read? Why does he speak to us today? From experimental to formal, from highly rhetorical to lyrical, from devotional to confessional, Herbert contains multitudes. Five poet-critics examine a range of poetry through the lens of the temporal, the formal, the devotional, the architectural, and the erotic. We intend to propose new readings of five poems to open a doorway to the past and reveal his contemporary relevance.

    Published Date: August 13, 2009
    Duration: 1:01:16
    Transcription: View Transcript

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  • Crystal Ballroom, Hilton Atlanta | March 3, 2007

    Episode 4: Freedom to Write? Our Obligation to Protect Expression

    (Eric Lax, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Larry Siems) The AWP Conference Atlanta 2007 brings you Freedom to Write? Our Obligation to Protect Expression. Are writers being silenced around the world? Are our first amendment freedoms at risk here at home? How do current affairs affect the rights of writers to practice their craft? What is the role of self-censorship in a culture of real or imagined threats to freedom of expression? Join PEN America and PEN USA, the two United States centers of PEN for this discussion about the state of the Freedom to Write. International PEN has been defending the rights of writers around the world for eighty-five years. Moderator: Joanne Leedom-Ackerman. Related info: For more information, please visit the following sites: PEN American Center & PEN Center USA.

    Published Date: July 11, 2007
    Duration: 0:43:27

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  • Grand Ballroom, Hilton Atlanta | March 1, 2007

    Episode 3: 2007 Keynote Address by Lee Smith

    (Lee Smith) The AWP Conference Atlanta 2007's Keynote Address by Lee Smith: A Life in Books. Sponsored by Georgia College & State University/Arts & Letters/Flannery O'Connor Review. Related info: Address was printed in the September 2007 issue of The Writers' Chronicle.

    Published Date: July 3, 2007
    Duration: 0:35:49

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  • Grand Salon, Hilton Atlanta | March 2, 2007

    Episode 2: Poetry Extravaganza part 2

    (Marilyn Hacker, Thomas Lu) The AWP Conference Atlanta 2007 brings you Poetry Extravaganza. Poetry Extravaganza was hosted by the Academy of American Poets. The Academy of American Poets presents a reading by four leading American poets. This recording (part 2 of 2) contains readings from Marilyn Hacker and Thomas Lux, and features a closing by Tree Swenson. Related info: See podcast episode 1 for more of this event. Find out more about The Academy of American Poets by visiting their website at: http://www.poets.org/

    Published Date: May 30, 2007
    Duration: 0:32:45

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  • Grand Salon, Hilton Atlanta | March 2, 2007

    Episode 1: Poetry Extravaganza part 1

    (David Bottoms, Cornelius Eady) The AWP Conference Atlanta 2007 brings you Poetry Extravaganza. Poetry Extravaganza was hosted by the Academy of American Poets. The Academy of American Poets presents a reading by four leading American poets. This recording (part 1 of 2) contains readings from David Bottoms and Cornelius Eady, and features an introduction by Tree Swenson. Related info: See podcast episode 2 for more of this event. Find out more about The Academy of American Poets by visiting their website at: http://www.poets.org/.

    Published Date: May 22, 2007
    Duration: 0:48:08

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