Awp conference & Bookfair 2018 Tentative Accepted Events

The Writer’s Newspaper: Why Storytelling Thrives in the Tampa Bay Times (Ben Montgomery, Kelley French, Michael Kruse, Lane DeGregory, Matt Tullis)

Reporters at the Tampa Bay Times don’t write articles. They write stories, and often, they write amazing stories. That’s why the Times is the best storytelling newspaper in the country. Through strong reporting and glorious writing, the Times shows its readers what it means to live in Florida. In this panel, current and former writers from the newspaper discuss how the newspaper embraced literary journalism and talk about the reporting, writing, and editing of their award-winning stories.

Writing a New Identity: Caribbean Women Writers from Beach and Carnival Culture to Political and Survival Text (Keisha-Gaye Anderson, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Mercy Tullis-Bukhari, Donna Weir-Soley, R. Erica Doyle)

Caribbean women writers like Audre Lorde, Jamaica Kincaid & June Jordan have pioneered a tradition of writing that is authentically Caribbean, while introducing styles that distinguish them from their predecessors. How do today's Caribbean women writers continue boldly tackling issues like sexual identity & social justice, birth new worlds while honoring the legacy of our ancestors? We are Caribbean women writers honoring our carnival culture while reclaiming lost spirituality, dialect & dignity

Writing as Migration (Nancy W. Au, May-Lee Chai, Ploi Pirapokin, Nayomi Munaweera, Achy Obejas)

Meaning thrives within the liminal linguistic space between words. For translators, this space is uniquely fraught. How do translators carry the scars of history, intersecting cultures and languages under their skin? What forms of resistance subsist and thrive within the art of translation? How do translators translate the untranslatable? What are the different ways and reasons translators might resist translation?

Writing Bad Ass and Nasty Women (Luanne Smith, Pam Houston, Jill McCorkle, Kim Addonizio, Ann Hood)

We long for empowered women, especially in today’s political climate. Writing such women, though, is not about capturing Wonder Woman on the page. At times, kicking butt, breaking laws, hearts and balls is necessary for the work, but at other times, the woman simply stands her ground and wants control over her own choices and body. The writers on this panel have given us bad ass women in their writing and sometimes been surprised by the reception. What is bad ass today? No cuffs required.

Writing Before You Write: How to Write a Book Proposal (Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, Elizabeth Isadora Gold, Marie Mockett, Ashley C. Ford, Garnette Cadogan)

The nice thing about nonfiction is you can sell it on proposal. The challenging thing about nonfiction is that you must write a book proposal. But how can you envision and communicate an entire book’s narrative arc before you've even written it? This diverse panel of prominent writers with a successful track record of pitching book proposals will detail and provide insights into what it takes to get a nonfiction book deal while exploring topics of professional etiquette and artistic integrity.

Writing Complex Female Characters for Young Audiences (Erin Summerhil, Betsy Aldredge, Natalka Burian, Margaret Dilloway, Laura Shovan)

Five YA and MG authors discuss how their main characters stand up for themselves and equality in this wide-ranging discussion covering various genres, voices, choices, character arcs, family structures, and backgrounds. The authors will examine the responsibilities inherent in writing for young audiences and how they approach creating complex, compelling, and inspiring female characters worth rooting for.

Writing Dementia: How we give voice to fragmentation and decline (Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Brendan Constantine, Kate Carroll De Gutes, Sarah Leavitt, Tina Schumann)

Dementia is, among many things, the fragmentation of a life. How does a writer give voice to that fragmentation and to its impact on family members and their stories? What is the challenge of putting into words the disintegration of personality, relationship, and lives? Two poets, an essayist, and a graphic memoirist wrangle with these questions and examine the ways parental dementia has shaped their recent work.

Writing From Privilege: Who Can Write What and Why? (Kaitlin Solimine, Vanessa Hua, Kirstin Chen, Kim Liao, Kelly Luce)

What does it mean to write from a position of privilege? How should white writers navigate their privileged positions? Are writers of color exempt, or are all writers inherently privileged by way of having the opportunities to pursue literary careers? In this panel, writers of a diversity of backgrounds and formats will discuss the question of who has permission to write what, and how it influences their willingness to write outside the confines of their race, gender, economic class, and more.

Writing Race, Class, and Gender in Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, and Poetry (Martin Lammon, Patricia Bell-Scott, Anthony Grooms, Valerie Boyd)

The debate seems endless over how far we can blur facts when writing about real lives and events; yet when narrative involves historical figures, that debate is even more crucial, especially when matters of race, class, and gender are at stake. Whether writing about the life of Zora Neale Hurston, or the intertwining lives of Eleanor Roosevelt and Pauli Murray, or a lynching, panel authors address ways their writing honors not only truth but facts in the current era of fake news and post-truth.

Writing Resistance: LGBTQ Writing as a Platform for Change (Tiff Ferentini, Julia Leslie Guarch, Seth Fischer, Everett Maroon, Kika Chatterjee)

With the safety and lives of LGBTQ individuals at stake now more than ever, the call for politically driven writing is even more urgent. This panel features LGBTQ writers known for their politically driven content, who use their writing as a platform for activism and change. Panelists will demonstrate how politically fueled writing can contribute to the change and support that the LGBTQ community needs, and how one’s pen can be the most powerful tool for those who wish to create change.

Writing Revolution: Not why, but how (Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes, Peter Mountford, Sunil Yapa, Jennine Capó Crucet, Nayomi Munaweera)

What are the specific challenges of writing about resistance and protest movements? How do we balance ethics, polemics, and aesthetics? How do we portray the labor—emotional and otherwise—of change-makers? When depicting historical movements what are the obligations to reality and the obligations to the imagination? This panel brings together writers for a craft discussion of how to write fiction about revolution, political violence, and entangled histories.

Writing that Raids the Real: Research in Three Genres (Clinton Crockett Peters, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Toni Jensen, Phong Nguyen, Jenny Molberg)

All writers reconstruct the world. Often we use imagination, but mining science, family history, interviews, or Project Muse can add context and metaphor. Panelists with books in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction discuss ways to investigate, including how to determine what research might be productive, such as interviewing George W. Bush, hanging around fracking sites, following arsonists, or milking libraries. They offer practical advice for crafting distinctive writing using factual materials.

Writing the Body in the 21st Century (Fiona McCrae, Carmen Maria Machado, Steph Burt, Danez Smith, Layli Long Soldier)

Writing about the body is part of a long tradition, and today’s rapidly shifting social and political landscape has given a new urgency to discussions about how bodies are perceived across boundaries of race, class, and sexual orientation. Graywolf Press brings together four writers of fiction and poetry with very different approaches to writing about the body. They will read from their latest books and Graywolf Press publisher Fiona McCrae will moderate a discussion about these approaches.

Writing the Frail Essay (Caren Beilin, Amina Cain, Shamala Gallagher, April Freely, Vi Khi Nao)

We are interested in essays that are wayward, unbalanced, embarrassing, strangely researched, disabled, and/or feminine. The frail essay, we argue, opens up a space of intimacy between writer and reader, one overlooked by conversations about “craft” and “mastery.” In this panel, we will read from our work and collaborate on key principles of frail essay writing. Then, along with the audience, we will apply these principles to a well-known masterful essay; we will together frail the strong.

Writing the Invisible: Genderqueer Writers on Writing and Representing Outside the Gender Binary (Tiff Ferentini, Julia Leslie Guarch, Jess Silfa, Sérgio-Andreo Bettencourt Urbina, Elliott Junkyard)

How do non-cis writers navigate a writing and publishing world rife with misgendering and identity erasure? How can one bring alive to the page a demographic that often goes unseen outside the realms of literature? This panel brings together transgender and gender nonconforming poets, playwrights, fiction, and comic writers as they discuss the challenges of writing outside the gender binary, and how one can make one’s characters, narrative, and personal identity visible both on and off the page.

Writing the Mind: Mental Health in YA Novels (Meg Eden, Natalka Burian, Sonia Belasco, SF Hensen)

Mental health is becoming an increasingly predominant and urgent topic in our current day and age--however, the topic continues to carry stigma, as well as misconceptions, in many circles. These panelists will discuss their own experiences and approaches with writing about mental health, as well as why they find the young adult novel medium to be such a powerful tool for discussing this vital topic.

Writing the Pain: Memoirists on Tackling Stories of Trauma (Melanie Brooks, Richard Blanco, Andre Dubus III, Kyoko Mori, Abigail Thomas)

Writing about traumatic experiences does not repair them. However, re-entering those memories, taking them apart, and then putting them back together again on our own terms, can transform them into something meaningful, perhaps even beautiful, for both writer and reader. On this panel, those who’ve courageously written about topics such as loss, illness, grief, or family dysfunction in poetry and prose explore the merit of giving narrative shape to our painful stories.

Writing the Revolutions (Paul Ketzle, Simmons Buntin, Juan Morales, Andy Hoffman, Heather Hirschi)

Revolutions are not accidents of history. Behind every act of resistance stand the writers and writing that inspired, shaped, transformed, and actualized them—Rousseau, Paine, Hamilton, Madison, Marx, Anthony, King, Friedan, Havel. From these historical lessons we turn to the current battles for LGBTQ, women, immigrants, and the environment and discuss the role and tactics that we will need to write today’s revolution.

Writing Through the Immigrant Lens (Mieke Eerkens, José Orduña, Marie Myung-Ok Lee , Ayşe Bucak , Dina Nayeri)

1st and 2nd generation immigrants represent a growing demographic in the writing community, and their backgrounds influence their work on many levels. Writing through the lens of an immigrant or child of immigrants can offer a unique perspective in content and voice, but also complicate a writer’s sense of identity, loyalty, place, and beliefs. Multi-genre panelists will share ways that their writing has been influenced by identities that straddle cultures, and offer strategies for challenges.

Writing Toward the Margins: When the Stereotypes Are Also Your Story (Monica Prince, Mike McClelland, Penny Dearmin, Natalie Sharp, Adam Sirgany)

Submission calls strive to include voices of marginalized identities, but many do this by requesting work that pigeonholes writers. Writers of intersecting marginalized identities balance writing what an audience “expects” and real life. How do writers address the stereotypical markers of their work (as women, POC, veterans, LGBT+ community, etc.) while also honoring their life stories? This panel explores stereotypes for marginalized writers while navigating expectation and truth.

Writing Women's Interior Lives (Julia Phillips, Jessie Chaffee, Leigh Stein, Krys Lee, Nicole Dennis-Benn)

Five years ago, Meg Wolitzer wrote in The New York Times of “that close-quartered lower shelf where books emphasizing relationships and the interior lives of women are often relegated.” The five panelists here, all of whom recently published or will publish books emphasizing those very subjects, discuss their intentions, craft, and relegation (or not) to that lower shelf. What’s changed in the five years since Wolitzer’s essay was printed? What can we expect to change in the five years to come?

Writing/Motherhood: Difficulty, Ambivalence, and Joy (Nancy Reddy, Chanda Feldman, Carolina Ebeid, Emily Perez, Chelsea Rathburn)

The fear of a “bad poem with a baby in it,” as Joy Katz puts it, is just one of the challenges of writing about mothering. There’s also the practical difficulties of writing while raising children. The poets on this panel speak back to cultural narratives about motherhood and writing, which often position motherhood as an all-consuming, joyous state at odds with art-making. Panelists will read poems and share ideas and experiences about navigating the intense work of writing and mothering.

Pedagogy
The Art of Unlearning in the Creative Writing Workshop (Amina Gautier, Emilia Phillips, Patrick Bizzaro, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Christopher Salerno)

Teachers of Creative Writing discuss impeding tendencies students often transfer into the workshop from their courses in Literature and Composition (as well as their own commonly held misperceptions). The panel will explore ways of facilitating a modern workshop classroom by helping students unlearn certain presuppositions about the processes of reading, writing, and evaluating in a workshop setting while also building the skill set important for writers operating in this unique environment.
A Winding Stair: Teaching Poetic Form (Richie Hofmann, Emily Leithauser, David Yezzi, Derrick Austin)

This panel, made up of poets, scholars, and teachers, offers diverse perspectives on the place of poetic form in the contemporary classroom. How can a deep engagement with received forms shape student writing? What other opportunities for learning, writing, and thinking might experimenting with formal poetry offer? What can students learn about life and language from formal craft? The discussion will cover historical and literary contexts, while also sharing practical pedagogical techniques.

A Year of Intersectional Thinking: Identity in the Classroom (Hafizah Geter, Amy Lemmon, Syreeta Mcfadden, Nicholas Boggs, Camille Rankine)

In times of political unrest and 24-hour news cycles, what is our responsibility as educators of creative writing and composition to teach students not only to write, but to observe, interpret, and make meaning out of what they see? How do we teach increasingly diverse student populations to think intersectionally about identity? VIDA invites panelists to discuss tools and approaches to enable students to think, discuss, and write about both their own marginalization and privilege.

Above, Beyond, and After Duty: Teaching Creative Writing to Veterans (Steve Kistulentz, Jesse Goolsby, Seema Raza, Lovella Calica, Matt Young)

Working artists across multiple genres discuss the challenges and rewards of teaching writing to veterans and active duty service members. In our panel discussion, we will cover institutional and individual approaches to pedagogy, why this work is worth doing, and how to do this emotionally exhausting and occasionally triggering work sustainably in university and community settings. Panelists will also discuss how their own writing has been influenced by working with this unique population.

Balancing Act: Neutrality in the Classroom? (David Ebenbach, Ru Freeman, Holly Karapetkova, Jess Row, Sarah Trembath)

After the 2016 election, many university administrations advised faculty to be politically neutral in the classroom, reminding us of our duty to students across the ideological spectrum. The rise of “professor watch lists” also make it risky for faculty—particularly contingent faculty—to be outspoken. But what if there’s fundamental conflict between the political zeitgeist and the core values of our workshops? How can we productively engage, and even resolve, this conflict in the classroom?

Beyond 140 Characters and the Canon: The Growth of Undergraduate Creative Writing (Laura van den Berg , Anne Valente , Sequoia Nagamatsu, Shane McCrae, Kirstin Valdez Quade )

As undergraduate creative writing programs become increasingly popular, many teachers of writing must learn and explore strategies specific to undergraduate instruction that may differ vastly from their graduate school experience. Five professors working exclusively with undergraduates will address conducting workshops, challenges specific to their students and, in turn, their teachers, as well as how to build, maintain, and identify the hallmarks of a dynamic undergraduate program.

Beyond the Workshop Model: Innovations in the Creative Nonfiction Classroom (Silas Hansen, Steven Church, Sarah Einstein, Sonya Huber, Marco Wilkinson)

When people hear you say, “I teach creative nonfiction writing,” most will automatically think of the workshop model—but what else is there? This panel, which includes teachers at both the introductory and advanced/undergraduate and graduate levels, will focus on the “what else” in the creative nonfiction classroom including collaborative assignments, multimodality, meditation as part of the writing practice, and the use of digital technologies like Twine, Google Maps, and augmented reality.

Bless Our Hearts: Teaching While Queer in the South (Brandy T. Wilson, Douglas Ray, Carter Sickels, Lu Vickers, Julie Marie Wade)

Teaching as a queer writer in the South has its own set of benefits and challenges, from Southern hospitality and humor to conservative religious values and students with little exposure the nontraditional literary canon. Should writers “come out” in the classroom? How can we address diversity in the classroom while making students feel respected and welcome? How does one address homophobia, racism, and sexism as a queer person? Panelists offer tips for teaching while queer in the South.

Bringing Creative Writing to Prisons (Zachary Lazar, Deb Olin Unferth, Mitchell S. Jackson)

This panel will feature a discussion between fiction writers Deb Olin Unferth, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Zachary Lazar about their experiences with the teaching and practice of creative writing in prisons. What are the particular challenges, obstacles, and possibilities, for writers and teachers in a prison setting? What is the value of creative writing in prisons and what are the logistical problems involved in setting up and sustaining a writing program in a correctional facility?

Building a Social Justice Writing Curriculum (Olivia Worden, Rachel Simon, Adam Falkner, Syreeta McFadden)

This panel will address how to conceptualize and enact a social justice focused writing curriculum. Through conversation we will address strategies to build a comprehensive and inclusive framework for the classroom. Whether you are teaching at a Trump supporting institution or a Black Lives Matter workshop, the panel will explore how to effectively work with summer high school student programs, minimum and maximum security prison inmate students, as well as college and graduate students.

Can, Shouldn't, Could: Ethics in the Poetry Workshop (Megan Levad, Jeffrey Schultz, Samiya Bashir, Dan Lau, Joshua Robbins)

Many poets have turned to an overt focus on ethics, while others resist writing that clearly springs from moral principles. Still other poets are ethically tone-deaf. Would questions of what a poem can or shouldn’t do be better addressed if we identified ethical frameworks in the workshop, in addition to poetic traditions and techniques? And would learning how to have these conversations in the classroom, rather than on social media, help us build a better poetry community?

Comics: Literature and Invention (Margaret Luongo, Joseph Bates, Martha Otis, Steve Dudas, Billy Simms)

Comics should be taught alongside other forms of literature, but comics can also provide a method for exploring creativity itself, particularly in writing classes. Panelists discuss approaches to comics in creative writing, composition, and literature courses, with emphasis on invention, storytelling, visual literacy, and metacognition. Audience members will take away assignment ideas and reading lists for immediate use in the classroom.

Creative Writers, Composition Teachers (Shane Seely, Rachael Stewart, Jenni Moody, Jonathan Udelson, Jose Angel Araguz)

Most creative writers who teach will, at some point in their careers, find themselves in the composition classroom. For many, first-year writing provides the first teaching experience. This panel explores the strengths that creative writers bring to the composition classroom, the struggles they inevitably face, and lessons from this teaching that can serve them throughout their teaching and writing careers.

Digital and Video essays in the Creative Writing Classroom (Jose Orduna, Ned Stuckey-French, Deborah Hall, Mieke Eerkens)

The Digital Revolution had introduced a new kind of essay – one that integrates image, text, sound, voice. Online journals now publish digital and video essays. But how do we teach these new forms? What essays do we use as models? What assignments do we give our students? Who is their audience? How does copyright law constrain sampling and remixing? How do we teach the use of technology and editing software in the writing classroom? What can our students, who are digital natives, teach us?

Early Formations: Guiding Authentic Young Voices in a Digital Age (Cate Marvin, Shane McCrae, Jess Row, Monica Ferrell, Mark Wunderlich)

Undergraduate creative writing professors have traditionally directed talented students toward Master’s Programs in hopes the voices they’ve discovered will be trained and sustained. Now, given our digital and hyper-professionalized age, many students publish prematurely, forgoing a period of sustained apprenticeship. What are the implications for our literary culture? How might we best serve writers during their college years? Five panelists speak to teaching practices in this new age.

Empathy in the Writing Classroom (Katharine Beutner, Andrea Lawlor, Mairead Case, Kristiana Kahakauwila)

This panel will connect creative writing pedagogy with our present political moment, in which calls for empathy and connection across differences proliferate. Experienced writer-teachers will address the functions and risks of empathy in the classroom and other writing spaces—we’ll discuss specific practices meant to spur empathy among students, but will also complicate the conversation by considering the ways that empathy can fail as a teaching tool and a tool for social change.

Exquisite Corpse 3.0: Active Learning in the Digital Creative Writing Classroom (Brian Brodeur, Nicole Terez Dutton, Kurtis Scarletta , Sarah Rose Nordgren )

In the brave new world of online creative-writing workshops, even instructors with limited training in digital technologies are expected to adapt face-to-face pedagogical approaches to online teaching environments. Join our panel of poets, fiction writers, essayists, and scholars as we consider best practices for reimagining digital innovations and pedagogical techniques for the online creative-writing classroom.