Each year, writing program directors nominate their students’ work for the Intro Journals Project, AWP’s literary competition, to discover and publish the best new works by students enrolled in AWP member programs. Winning entries are published in participating literary journals.

Join us Thursday, October 27, 2022, at 6:00 p.m. ET as four more 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 Kara Melissa, K Janeschek, John Kneisley, and Summer Wrobel.

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

Kara Melissa (she/her) is a transplant Torontonian and mama of two (teen and tween). A former international teacher, she became a full-time stay-at-home mom when her son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. A regular contributor to a blogging community of parents of kids with disabilities and complex needs, she also runs free/pay-what-you-can workshops for this demographic. Her work has appeared in Today’s Parent, The Mighty, Drunk Monkeys, and Medium, among other places.  She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Nonfiction from Antioch University LA and is a 2022 recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Project Award. She’s just launched her website at karamelissa.com, where you can find out much more. 

K Janeschek (they/them) is a lesbian writer originally from the Midwest. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Foglifter, HAD, Split Rock Review, Great Lakes Review, Hoxie Gorge Review, and elsewhere, and has won an AWP Intro Journals Project award in poetry as well as Hopwood awards in both poetry and nonfiction. They live in Alaska. 

John Kneisley is a poet living in Fort Collins, Colorado, and is a student in Colorado State's MFA program. At CSU, he is working on a collection about memory and oblivion, exploring loss as a site of unexpected rebirth by way of the natural world. He is also interested in poetry as a mode of caregiving—for both the living and the dead, the human and the non-human, and for beings we might struggle to interact with otherwise. His recent poetry has appeared in Quarterly West, Bellevue Literary Review, and has received support from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference.

Summer C.J. Wrobel is a writer from Brooklyn, New York. She currently resides in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at UNCW. Her work is forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review and Hayden’s Ferry Review.