017 awp conference & Bookfair February —11, 2017 • Washington, dc

Outside the Umbrella: Poetry and the Vantage Point of the Atypical. (jim ferris, leilani hall, stephen kuusisto, sheila black)

What does it mean to write poems from what disability studies scholar Simi Linton called “the vantage point of the atypical?” How do body/mind differences that fall outside the umbrella of normality serve as fonts for work by non-normative poets? These are some of the questions that four noted crip poets brought into a year-long correspondence in prose and poems. The poets share some of that work and discuss ways the differences called “disability” complicate and enrich their lives and work.

Outward in larger Terms: Adrienne Rich's Collected Poems. (Ed Pavlic, Yusef Komunyakaa, Jill Bialosky, Joy Harjo, Pablo Conrad)

This panel marks W.W. Norton's publication of Adrienne Rich's Collected Poems: 1950-2012. The appearance of this volume makes possible (calls for) a mapping, sounding, and gauging of the expansive reality--the terrain (surface), volume (depth), and climate (atmosphere)--of the poet's incomparable career. This panel has been assembled to do just that: to describe the elements that comprise the multi-dimensional power of Adrienne Rich's life and work as a resource for continued, engaged endeavor.

Pacific Rim Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics. (Tony Barnstone, Mindy Zhang, Mark Bender, Jonathan Skinner)

Is ecopoetry a genre, a topic, a map? With roots in Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, and folk beliefs, Pacific Rim ecopoetry often promotes a spiritual connection to nature and a distrust of the marketplace. Much contemporary Pacific Rim ecopoetry blossoms from these roots, but with an extra urgency due to the radioactive legacy of WWII and nuclear energy spills; deadly air, water and ground pollution; and the related cultural and social changes experienced by local cultures and ethnic minority groups.

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain: Are Literary Magazines Too Secretive About Slushpile Submissions? (Matthew Limpede, Barbara Westwood Diehl, Lydia Ship, Ralph Pennel)

What happens behind the scenes with a slushpile of submissions at a literary magazine? Editors from Carve, the Baltimore Review, Midway Journal, and the Chattahoochee Review candidly discuss their approach for managing the slushpile, including how to form a diverse reading committee, increase transparency, reduce response times, and offer feedback. An insightful look that aims to draw back the curtain for both writers and other editors on the inner workings of literary magazines.

Peace Corps Writers: Crossing Borders, Spanning Genres. (Joanna Luloff, Peter Chilson, Susan Rich, Sandra Meek, Tyler McMahon)

Poets, journalists, and novelists share their experiences as Peace Corps volunteers. The panelists will discuss how their service affected their writing, their relationship to literature, and their careers. They will address the challenges of writing about other nations and other cultures, as well as the assumptions and misconceptions many readers and editors hold about the Peace Corps. They hope to present international aid work as a valid option for a writer’s growth and education.

Persian Poetry as American Influence: a Multi-Genre Discussion. (Roger Sedarat, Don Share, Tom Sleigh, Elizabeth T Gray)

Over a half century before Ezra Pound turned to Chinese and Japanese poetry to help establish a poetics of western modernism, Ralph Waldo Emerson found his way to another, less recognized region of Asia. While poetry from Iran continues to inform American writing, its significance remains somewhat neglected. Five acclaimed American and Iranian-American authors offer new insights about the influence of Persian poetry upon their fiction, criticism, poetry, journalism, and literary translation.

Philip Dacey Tribute. (Susan McLean, David Jauss, Stephen Dunn, Barton Sutter, Biljana D. Obradovic)

Five poets will discuss Philip Dacey’s extraordinary contribution to contemporary poetry as a prolific, award-winning poet, generous mentor and teacher. They will also read selected poems by Dacey. A video will be presented of Dacey’s last public performance of his poetry, Marshall Festival 2015, Southwest Minnesota State University, Oct. 2015. After the panel discussion, several family members and friends will also read poems by Dacey.

Place as Wellspring: Re-imagining Local Fiction. (Laura Long, Pinckney Benedict, Jonathan Corcoran, Ann Pancake, Natalie Sypolt)

Five fiction writers who grew up in West Virginia explore how this place shaped them as writers and continues to fuel their writing. While Appalachia is central to their work, the writers will also speak to the challenges of writing about all misunderstood and often maligned places. How does one write with boldness and originality about places usually stereotyped, and how does one draw on deep local knowledge to ultimately transcend the local?

Poetry as Public Art in Public Spaces. (Tina Cane, Kate Rybka Brennan, David Hassler, Alice Quinn, Steve Young)

In cities across America, public places are becoming the canvas for poets, transforming American cities and communities. With words adorning sidewalks, walls, banners, trains, and trees, poetry ignites moments of joy and cross-cultural connections between people. Panelists will discuss innovative ways to make poetry more accessible and how to foster literary destinations. Examples will range from the commercial to the monumental.

Poetry Has Value: Exploring the Tricky Intersections Of Poetry, Money and Worth. (Jessica Piazza, Stephanie Young, Elizabeth Onusko, Manjula Martin, Dan Brady)

Poetry doesn't pay: it's a cliche and a statistical truth. But why? Paying poets for their work is a concept stymied by many obstacles, from the utilitarian (no money) to the logistical (no audience) to the philosophical (poetry is the most spiritual genre, ruined by commodification). But.is it possible to pay poets? Is it important? This panel will interrogate poetry's place in the financial/capitalistic world, while questioning how money promotes or complicates its many non-monetary values.

Poets as Translators: Versionists, Revisionists, or Vehicles? (Barbara Goldberg, David Keplinger, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Mark Irwin, Alana Marie Levinson LaBrosse)

Do poets who translate produce a new poem that imitates the source material, or do they "bring across" the idiom and word in the full definition of the word, "translating”? Are poets vehicles for the work they translate, or are they called on to recreate? If the latter, what is permissible within the context of literary translation? Languages: Danish, French, Hebrew, Kurdish, Romanian.

Poets Mothering Otherwise: Race, Disability, Queerness. (Joelle Biele, Amanda Johnston, Hoa Nguyen, Deborah Paredez, Lisa L Moore)

What are the ethics and politics of writing about our children when our families are politically vulnerable? Questions of censorship, privacy and children's rights resonate differently in poetry of witness or advocacy than in memoir or confessional work. As queer mothers, mothers of color, mothers of children with disabilities, what do we refuse to write about our families? What may we, must we, share as poets of witness? And how do we tell the difference?

Poets on Craft- Tipping the scales in persona poetry. (Laura Fairgrieve, Tina Chang, Sandra Beasley, Nicole Beer, Brian Barker)

This panel will investigate the masks constructed by poets as they write from perspectives different from their own. We will discuss the decision-making involved in the process of writing persona poetry, and what it means to work within another’s identity. We will discuss the ways in which the roles of fiction and research can work with or against each other in rendering personas. How much authority can poets take over different personas? Where can this pay off, and where can it go wrong?

Poets Writing the Holocaust: The New Generation. (Hadara Bar-Nadav, Michael Homolka, Sharon Dolin, Allison Benis-White, Maya Pindyck)

Theodore Adorno famously claimed: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” yet many poets are still compelled to do so. Second and third generation poets will share their writing on the Holocaust and reflect on temporal and experiential distances that challenge writing on this topic. How does the generational gap affect how the Holocaust is treated in contemporary poetry? What trials, tensions, and generative possibilities does writing about the Holocaust involve for today’s poets?

Practicum and Beyond: Publishing Courses and Literary Citizenship. (Erika Meitner, Phong Nguyen, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Lisa Roney, Ron Mitchell)

Educators and editors from The Florida Review, Memorious, Pleiades, Southern Indiana Review, and SIR Press will address strategies for the vision and implementation of publishing courses in academia, creating a learning environment that both introduces professional skills and addresses larger questions of literary aesthetics, ethics, history, and community. Topics will include diversity, gender, inequity, intersectionality, multi-media technologies and social justice.

Protean Acts: The Art of Reinvention. (Victoria Chang, Dana Levin, Richard Siken, Sarah Vap, Jericho Brown)

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.

Publishing Diversely: Challenges and Successes, Sponsored by SPD. (Trisha Low, Piyal Bhattacharya, Charles Flowers, Zoe Tuck)

A diverse panel of small press publishers, authors, and arts leaders share their approaches to addressing—and achieving—diversity and representation as independent literary publishing.

Putting Madness to Work: The Poetics and Politics of Recovery. (Cynthia Oka, Jeffery Renard Allen, Rickey Laurentiis, Craig Santos Perez, Seema Reza)

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 subvert the politics by which trauma is linked to social identity and prescribed strategies of recovery.

Queering Masculinities. (Charlie Bondhus, Michael V. Smith, Jarrett Neal, CJ Southworth, Joy Ladin)

This cross-genre panel--comprised of writers who identify, previously identified, or live(d) as male--considers how we, as trans folk, gender nonconforming individuals, and/or cis men have experienced and challenged our relationships to masculinity. To explore how these experiences (re)shape and complicate our writing both in terms of form and subject, each panelist will read some pertinent work and comment on the roles their (dis)affiliations with masculinity played in shaping it.

Reading and Writing Improve Patient Care: The Case for Narrative Medicine. (Owen Lewis, Rafael Campo, Kamilah Aisha Moon, Kate Daniels, Pranav Nanda)

Poetry/writing at work--engagement in close reading or writing with those seeking and giving help has been shown to improve the quality of care. An internist writes with hospitalized patients. A psychiatrist introduces poetry in psychotherapy. A med student writes to understand his role with an abused child. A poet workshops with the stressed staff of a project for released felons. Another poet tells the often misunderstood story of an autistic child. This is the scope of Narrative Medicine

Reading as an Editor: The Intimate Hermeneutics of Work in Progress. (Caitlin Horrocks, Catherine Adams, Peter Dimock, Mara Naselli)

Frank O’Connor wrote that William Maxwell guided his writers not by directive, but by saying "This I think is what you are trying to say.” Good editors occasion the latent genius of a work through conversation, inviting that blaze of understanding between reader and writer. These panelists have a broad range of experience acquiring, developing, and writing fiction and nonfiction. We will discuss how a deep engagement with works in progress informs and enriches one's own reading and writing life.

Real Talk, Real Action: Road Maps to Authentic Cultural Diversity. (Alexandra van de Kamp, Jenny Browne, Octavio Quintanilla, Christopher Rooster Martinez, Laurie Ann Guerrero)

Writers from San Antonio’s academic and community-based literary arts centers, including two San Antonio poet laureates, discuss the concrete steps and strategies they have taken to build cultural diversity among literary offerings in their growing Texas city. What are the barriers to, and opportunities for, creating a dynamic literary eco-system that reflects and values different perspectives?

Reclaiming the Past: The Challenge of Understanding Vanished Cultures. (Matt Burriesci, Maitrayee Basu, Bret Schulte, Huan Hsu)

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.

Recovering Out of Print Queer Literature. (Philip Clark, Lisa C. Moore, Julie R. Enszer, Jan Freeman, Stephen Motika)

The publications of many important LGBTQ writers have fallen out of print and become inaccessible to readers today. This situation poses special challenges for LGBTQ authors published by small independent presses. As readers, editors, and publishers, how can we uncover and restore LGBTQ writing in danger of being lost? How can this work be brought to new readers’ attention? With our AWP audience, we will reflect on the recovery of this marginalized literary history, culture, and community.

Redesigning/Rebranding Your Literary Journal. (Abigail Serfass, Stephanie G'Schwind, Danielle Buynak, Aaron Alford, Aaron Burch)

Besides consistently publishing excellent writing, what else must your literary journal do to remain relevant? How important is design? Do readers care about your journal's look? This panel gathers editors of literary journals that have recently undergone major redesigns. Each panelist will share the challenges of such an undertaking, editorial considerations taken along the way, inspirations they followed, and reasons why they felt a fresh look was necessary for their publication.

Religious Metaphors in Nonreligious Poetry. (Jennifer Michael Hecht, Kim Addonizio, Matthew Zapruder, Timothy Liu, Cornelius Eady)

Poets who are not religious still may use religious words, such as heaven, prayer, sin, sabbath, hell, soul, ghosts, karma, or nirvana. Ghosts may be a way to talk about grief. "Soul" can mean one’s truest inner self. “God” isn’t “God,” yet the word shows up. What do these metaphors help us to see and what do they hide? The panel members are poets from diverse worlds, also well known for their insight on poetry. We’ll talk about it, reference poetry, and read our own poetry that relates.

Say Yes to the Press: How Effective Small Publisher Publishers Do What They Do, Sponsored by SPD. (Brent Cunningham, Juliana Spahr, Martin Riker, J. K. Fowler Fowler, Sunyoung Lee)

Independent literary small press publishers using a variety of models share how they did it, how they do it, and how they sustain their efforts. Of equal interest to other small publishers and to those contemplating starting their own small press, hear about lessons learned, unique strategies for reaching readers, and a diversity of solutions for publishing on a tight budget.

Science in Literary and Mainstream Fiction: A New Wave. (Nancy Lord, Susan Gaines, Kathleen Dean Moore, Michael Byers, Allegra Goodman)

Recent decades have seen an upsurge of novels that deal with knowledge, themes, and characters from scientific fields such as biology, ecology, chemistry, genetics, paleontology, neuroscience, and psychology. Panelists will discuss the reasons for this trend, the particular craft challenges and responsibilities of writing about science in realistic fiction, and the ramifications of such fiction for public understandings of science and debates on related social and environmental issues.

Second Blooming: Women authors debuting after 50. (Ellen Meeropol, Paulette Boudreaux, Jeanne Gassman, Sandra Gail Lambert, Cynthia Bond)

The publishing playing field for women is not level, especially when compounded by age, disability, sexual orientation, race, or thorny material. On this 50th AWP anniversary, five second-career authors who published first novels after age 50 share their circuitous paths to publication and discuss how to navigate, survive, and flourish as literary late bloomers.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Organizing and Structuring Story Collections. (Sian Griffiths, Eric Sasson, Benjamin Hale, Marie-Helene Bertino, Michael Martone)

Putting together a story collection can feel like assembling a jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces don’t quite fit and there is no one solution. Must the stories be interconnected or thematically connected? Can stories be linked by virtue of voice, tone, or style? How much does the marketplace influence the writer's approach? The panel presents writers of interconnected, thematically connected and unconnected stories to provide insight for story writers seeking to build their collections.

Sexual Violence & the Poem as a Formal Body. (Niki Herd, Cathy Linh Che, Peter Mason, Paul Tran)

With lyrical or narrative or experimental verse, poets are slowly erasing shadows of silence and shame by bringing unique voices to the page when writing about sexual violence. This is particularly the case when an individual poet successfully writes from a survivor’s point of view. Four diverse and stylistically varied poets will discuss their process for writing about sexual violence and the relationship between thematic intention and craft choices.

Shape-Shifting and Writers' Centers. (Heidi Stalla, Marion Wrenn, Amy Becker, Kristin Dombek, Laurel Fantauzzo)

What are the visible and invisible effects of bringing creative writing and academic writing into the same physical space, thus emphasizing that writing practice is by no means a second-tier academic discipline? With growing interest in crossing boundaries—both inside and outside of the academy—university administrators, writers, and writing teachers would do well to re-think the way Writing Centers and Writing Programs are framed and situated within institutions.

Silent Hearing: Poetry That “Sounds” on the Page or Screen. (Ellen McGrath Smith, Jennifer Bartlett, Barbara Edelman, Jordan Scott)

It is a commonplace that poetry has its roots in orality, but it is also true that some poetries are written on the page and for the page—or, more recently, for the screen. This panel will explore the sorts of “soundings” enacted in these poetries— from the modernist poems of William Carlos Williams to the mid-twentieth-century writing of Larry Eigner to the contemporary experimental poetry of Ed Roberson and Myung Mi-Kim—considering how they reach readers through the interaction of the visual w

So You're a Writer Looking For a Publishing Day Job. (Sona Charaipotra, Emily XR Pan, Eric Smith, Rhoda Belleza, Linda Camacho)

It's hard to pay the bills with your writing alone, so now you're hunting for that perfect desk job that will surround you with what you love best: words and fellow readers. But what are the routes you can take to land said job? And will it benefit your writing? A diverse group of writers with backgrounds from various aspects of the publishing business -- and a mix of conventional and unconventional ways of getting into those roles -- discuss their experiences and concerns.

Social Justice and Poetic Communites. (David Welch, Jaswinder Bolina, Reuben Jackson, Dora Malech, Erika Sanchez)

How do poets approach social justice in their practice? How can teachers empower their students & compassionately engage with various communities & experiences? What's the responsibility of the poet-critic to bear witness? How can journalists promote social change in the arts? The poets on this panel will discuss their creative work & how it both supports & is enriched by their journalism, criticism, & community leadership, as well as how they consider the role of activism throughout their work.

Social Media: Breaking Barriers for the Marginalized, the Remote, and the Academic Outsider. (Kelly Thompson, Sandra Gail Lambert, Vanessa Martir, Michele Filgate, Alice Anderson)

Five authors who write from the edges will present ways, both practical and emotional, that Social Media has advanced their careers and craft. Class, disability, gender, education, and race are among the barriers to accessing a writing community. But Social Media can connect those of us who exist at the margins or outside of the academic literary world to editors, publishers, journals, conference leaders, and other writers. It can even serve as an education in itself.

Socially Conscious Fiction: Writing That Can Change the World. (Allison Wright, Anna March, Jabari Asim, Naomi Jackson, Garth Greenwell)

This inclusive panel explores socially conscious fiction and its ability to lift us in today’s socio-political climate. Panelists are at the forefront of such writing and will discuss their own fiction and a larger literary landscape. We will consider race, gender/sexuality, religion, class, ethnicity and disability. Examples from relevant work will be offered and we will examine writing stories that are both beautiful and concerned with elevating social ideals. Handouts: craft and bibliography.

Spaceships and Detectives: Native American Fiction and the Literary Genre Novel. (Erika Wurth, Toni Jensen, David Weiden, Daniel Wilson, Blake Hausman)

This panel will address the ways in which genre fiction, especially when it is innovative in form and content, uniquely addresses the concerns of Native people in fiction. In most fiction and art media, Natives are relegated to tiny, boring spaces. Literary realism by Native writers moves us out of these spaces, but what about beyond? This panel represents a diverse aesthetic and conceptual selection of Native genre writing today.

Speaking of the Dead: Craft & Ethics in Nonfiction. (Peter Selgin, Dustin Beall Smith, Lidia Yuknavich, Gayle Brandeis)

Writing about the living poses obvious risks: broken trusts, wounded feelings, turn ties, damaged reputations, and possible legal and social repercussions. But what risks confront us in writing about the dead? That the dead can’t defend themselves does not free us, as writers, from our responsibilities toward them and their legacies; if anything it increases them. In speaking of the dead, what are those responsibilities? The panelists will share their experiences.

Stars to Steer By: Rethinking Creative Writing Curriculum for the 21st Century. (Cathy Day, Porter Shreve, Mary Biddinger, Terry Kennedy, Ashley Mack-Jackson)

For 50 years, we’ve resisted becoming a pre-professional discipline. We don’t map our curriculum with career outcomes, but because of this, many undergraduate and graduate creative writing students finish their degrees with no idea what to do next except get an MFA and apply for a dwindling number of tenure-track positions. How can we rethink our curriculum for the 21st century to give our students more “stars to steer by” professionally without sacrificing our historic emphasis on craft?