We are so excited to premiere another installation of Virtual AWP! Join us for Virtual AWP: Writer to Writer Conversations & Readings with Mentor Lara Lillibridge, featuring mentees Robin Pickering, Mika Todd, and Ann Wilberton. This discussion focuses on the intersection of queerness and writing and the mentees’ experiences in the AWP Writer to Writer program. 

The premiere of this Virtual AWP event will also include a live Q&A on YouTube on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. ET. Register online to receive a reminder and a direct link to this free event and updates on future events. 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 in on YouTube.

Interested in the Writer to Writer program, but don’t know where to start? Visit the Writer to Writer page to learn more and get involved.

Mentor bio:

Lara Lillibridge (she/they) is the author of Mama, Mama, Only Mama: An Irreverent Guide for the Newly Single Parent; Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home, and coeditor of the anthology, Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility. Her essay collection: The Truth About Unringing Phones, releases March 2024 with Unsolicited Press. Lara is the interviews editor for Hippocampus Magazine, a creative nonfiction editor for HeartWood Literary Magazine, and holds an MFA from West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Mentee bios:

Robin Pickering (she/they) is a yogi, queerpunk guitarist, and chronically ill human who is perfectly happy to be a misfit. She lit-magged her way through her schooling years in rural Maine and not so rural Poughkeepsie. Upon graduating from Vassar college, she jumped right into educational publishing and the definitely not rural NYC.

Robin detoured for almost twenty years as a yoga teacher, writing and playing music on the side. An excerpt of her novel Volant was published in an anthology by Soft Skull Press, and she is now working on a neurodivergent memoir, ATOMIC. A meditator and only child, she’s just as comfortable at a loud punk show as she is alone in silence.

Mika Todd is a queer writer, artist, and educator from southwest Virginia. They hold a BFA. in sculpture and extended media from Virginia Commonwealth University, and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Colorado State University, where they work as an editorial assistant for Colorado Review. They have over six years teaching across disciplines, including composition and rhetoric, creative writing, and English as a foreign language. Recent accolades include a residency as an Interdisciplinary Artist at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and one of two runner ups for the 2023 Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing.

Ann Wilberton is a queer poet and librarian living in Rhode Island. She’s interested in writing about queer joy, memory/forgetting, invisible disability, and aging.  Her work can be found in Rattle, Maine Review, and Critical Read.