The Writer's Notebook
Articles on publishing, teaching, career advice, current literary affairs, and more. In short, a blog about everything in your notebook.
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Breathing to Write
Jennifer Sinor | April 2020
We must teach the whole person. To deny students their complete identity as human beings is to sever them at the neck.
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From Disaster to Hope: Leza Lowitz’s Up from the Sea and the Art of Novels-In-Verse
Meg Eden | April 2020
With my just-released poetry collection Drowning in the Floating World, I wanted to return to the central event of these poems—the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima Powerplant disaster—reflecting on this tragedy with new eyes.
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AWP’s Online Resources for Writers
AWP | March 2020
AWP has compiled a list of some of our online resources you might find useful. We also look forward to hearing from you about your experiences working online.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Melissa Faliveno
AWP | February 2020
I’m looking forward to exploring the city. Whenever I’m in a new place I take some time to scope out the independent and used/antiquarian bookstores, so I’ll definitely be doing that, and might try to catch some music.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Octavio Quintanilla
AWP | February 2020
The first time I attended AWP was in Los Angeles. The thing I remember most has to be the human buzz, the excitement, the anticipation to hear some of my favorite writers present and read their work.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Donika Kelly
AWP | February 2020
Every AWP, I look forward to getting hugs from my friends who I haven’t seen because we live in different places. The hugs are the best.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Jean Kwok
AWP | February 2020
Author friends told me that AWP was THE conference to attend in order to connect, so I tried it.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Carrie Fountain
AWP | February 2020
The area around the library—the Southwest School of the Arts, etc.—is just lovely.
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25 Tips for AWP Success
Paulette Perhach | February 2020
Like the life of being a writer itself, AWP is fun, fulfilling, and terrifying. What brings me there every year is that it’s the largest gathering of writers in the country, which is the exact thing that also makes me want to run for my life every time I first open the door.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Eileen Cronin
AWP | February 2020
I try to support panels where a friend is participating, especially writers who have historically been cut out of literature, and that seems to me to be the disabled writers at this point.
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Two Writers Walk into an Elevator
Paulette Perhach | February 2020
I didn’t decide to go to AWP with my poet friend Michelle until my FOMO spiked just a few weeks out, and by then the hotels were booked. This was the LA year.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with James Tate Hill
AWP | February 2020
Although I read digitally and through audio, I always look forward to the Bookfair for an opportunity to chat with editors of presses and journals.
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Interview with David Laidacker-Luna, President, Fiesta Youth
Ely Vance | February 2020
I became involved with Fiesta Youth as a volunteer over 4 years ago and have been involved ever since. It was something I knew right away that I wanted to be a part of.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Alice McDermott
AWP | February 2020
My advice to first-timers is take it easy, don't try to do everything, and if you see an old friend, teacher, writing buddy, always remind them of your name and place.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Deborah Paredez
AWP | February 2020
I'm a San Antonio native, and March is a beautiful time to visit. I would recommend taking in some art at the Presa House Gallery and hiking the Mission Trail and having a drink at the legendary Esquire Bar.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Julian Randall
AWP | February 2020
The CantoMundo 10-year reading. That one is going to be flames, and I highly recommend it!
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Willie Perdomo
AWP | February 2020
I'm definitely looking forward to Helena María Viramontes' keynote. I'm also excited about launching LatiNext, which is the new volume in the BreakBeat Poets anthology series out of Haymarket Books.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Elizabeth Acevedo
AWP | February 2020
Listening to Patricia Smith read had a lasting impact; she is legendary and it felt clear in the way the entire room seemed to be on the edge of their seats, craning forward, that she was casting a spell on all of us.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Jake Skeets
AWP | February 2020
I think it’s important to honor the writers who have paved the way for Native & Indigenous literature to exist within the national market and consciousness.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Mahogany L. Browne
AWP | February 2020
I'm always excited to see what new ways the writers and educators are sharing their work and processes.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Katharine Coles
AWP | February 2020
The times that give me the warmest feelings involve drinking wine and eating great food with my old friends from graduate school and newer friends who have grown close along the way.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Norma E. Cantú
AWP | January 2020
I am looking forward to Helena Maria Viramontes’s Keynote and to the sessions with Latinx writers like my buddies from Kansas City!
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Liliana Valenzuela
AWP | January 2020
It’s ginormous! Focus on a few authors and panels and go from there.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Kristen Young
AWP | January 2020
Though I’ve often preferred to travel alone, I was glad to have a buddy during my first AWP. I feel renewed by even brief meetups for coffee, and it’s nice to have someone to sit with between panels. Later in the evening, nothing saves a hotel bar like a familiar face.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Monique Truong
AWP | January 2020
In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow: a debut novel that introduces us to an unforgettable small town in North Carolina and a cast of characters who are remarkably fully formed, each one charming and flawed and carrying within them the weight of history.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with TC Tolbert
AWP | January 2020
I’m a student at heart so I love going to the panels where I take copious notes and geek out.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Aimee Liu
AWP | January 2020
There’s almost too much to choose from! This year I’m excited to be part of the Red Hen Press family at the Bookfair, and I always look forward to the keynote and to the AWP reunion of alumni and faculty from the Goddard College MFA Program where I teach.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Ada Calhoun
AWP | January 2020
I met the Solid State Bookstore guys at an AWP panel a couple of years ago and when I was on my last book tour they took me to a Nationals game. I'm hoping to parlay this AWP into more baseball games nationwide.
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#AWP20 Featured Presenter Q&A with Ellen Meeropol
AWP | January 2020
My publisher, Red Hen Press, always has a big booth at the Bookfair and I love hanging out there. It’s my AWP home base.
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The Prestigious Fulbright Award Is for Creative Writers, Too
Katherine Arnoldi | January 2020
Do you have a novel you want to write that takes place in Sicily? Madagascar? Belarus? Tahiti?
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