Each year, writing program directors nominate their students’ work for the Intro Journals Project, AWP’s literary competition for the discovery and publication of the best new works by students enrolled in AWP member programs. Winning entries are published in participating literary journals. These journals include Colorado Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, Reed Magazine, and Tampa Review.

Join us Thursday, October 20, 2022, at 6:00 p.m. ET as four 2022 Intro Journals winners read a selection of their work and discuss their creative process, the inspiration behind their winning piece, and where they are headed next. Intro Journals General Editor Dave Essinger of the University of Findlay leads the conversation with Kanika Ahuja, Jerilynn Aquino, Samuel Burt, and Sandy Robertson.

The premiere of this Virtual AWP event will also include a live Q&A on YouTube. To receive a reminder and a direct link to this free event, as well as updates on future events, register online. *Registration is free, and you do not have to be a member of AWP to do so. However, to participate in the live Q&A, you must be signed into YouTube.

General Editor Bio:

Dave Essinger’s first novel, Running Out, was released in print by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2017 and in audiobook in 2018.  Recent work appears in Gargoyle, The Vincent Brothers Review, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere.  He’s recently finished a new novel, Compassion Fatigue, about a small-town veterinarian whose children are implicated after a local tragedy.  Dave received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is General Editor of the AWP Intro Journals Project.  He teaches creative writing and edits the literary magazine Slippery Elm at the University of Findlay, in Ohio. 

See more at dave-essinger.com.

Participant Bios:

Kanika Ahuja is a poet and educator from New Delhi, India. The winner of Quarterly West's Inaugural Contest in Poetry and the AWP Intro Journals Project 2022, her work appears, or is forthcoming, at The Margins, Puerto Del Sol, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Lafayette, Indiana, where she's an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Purdue University.  

Jerilynn Aquino is a Puerto Rican writer from Philadelphia whose work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Reed Magazine, River Styx, Passages North, and elsewhere. She received her M.F.A. in Fiction from Temple University and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Creative Nonfiction at Oklahoma State University. You can find her on Twitter @jl_noaqui.

Samuel Burt is a poet and artist from Grinnell, Iowa, where he received his Russian degree from Grinnell College in 2017. Currently completing his poetry MFA at Bowling Green State University, Sam also serves as Blog Manager for Mid-American Review and as a reader for Palette Poetry. His poems may be found in Salt Hill, The Journal, Arc Poetry Magazine, and forthcoming in Colorado Review and Ghost City.

Sandy Robertson holds a Ph.D. in Spanish literature. She studied in Spain during the final years of the Franco regime and later did fieldwork in Spain with Diego Catalán of the Seminario Menéndez Pidal, who taught her the value of primary resources. Currently, she is working on a novel for the MFA at San Diego State University.