Awp conference & Bookfair 2018 Tentative Accepted Events

Facilitating Lightbulbs: Social Justice in the Writing Classroom (Melissa Febos, Rachel Simon, Olivia Worden, Syreeta McFadden, Santee Frazier)

Are you looking for texts that will open a productive dialogue on the subjects of race, class, sexuality, gender, environmental justice, citizenship, or rape culture in your writing classroom? Are you looking to signal a commitment to social justice in the composition classroom despite your audience or administration? 5 Social Justice and writing practitioners will share their favorite texts and tools to open the conversation.

From Pronouns to Pedagogy: Queering the Creative Writing Classroom (Kathie Bergquist, Trace Peterson, Charles Rice Gonzales, C. Russel Price, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan)

Outside of the rare queer lit class, creative writing curricula remains overwhelmingly cis and hetero-centered, and queer experience, marginalized or ignored. Addressing practical concerns, such as confronting insensitivity in the workshop and integrating diverse texts, alongside theoretical questions of queer literary aesthetic and semiotics, this multi-genre panel examines how we cultivate LGBTQ+, trans and genderqueer-inclusive creative writing classrooms––to the benefit of all our students.

From Words to Images: Making Comics (for Writers) (Jarod Rosello, John Dermot Woods, Lydia Conklin)

So you’re a writer and you want to make comics? Then you’ve come to right place! Through this interactive panel, attendees will participate in hands-on comics activities, and learn practical techniques and approaches for moving from language to image, from writing to drawing, from literature to comics. The panelists will show comics that represent many levels of artistic skill and share tips for writers interested in learning to make comics.

Gender Outlaws: Teaching Gender Identity in Creative Writing (Silas Hansen, Jody Keisner, Meg Day, Ching-in Chen, Misha Rai)

This multi-genre, gender-diverse panel will discuss inclusive pedagogical approaches that move beyond the gender binary in order to expand their students’ creative writing potential. Panelists offer examples of practical application in the classroom and also discuss the challenges they faced, such as seeking institutional support for LGBTQIA+ curriculum, incorporating lessons into classes that aren’t designated as gender special topics, and teaching a classroom of cis-identified students.

Get Lit: Transform your writing by fusing classic poetry with your own spoken word! (Kelly Grace Thomas, Patricia Smith , Tony Hoagland , Mila Cuda , Raul Herrera)

Get Lit presents an award-winning pedagogy guaranteed to ignite classrooms and spark the poet inside each student. The Get Lit curriculum fuses classic poetry (from Rumi to Tupac) with original spoken word response writing, to embolden and inspire social consciousness in diverse youth (13-24). This multi-generational panel filled with award-winning poetic luminaries will showcase the power of Get Lit to transform your self-expression. “Claim your poem. Claim your life!”

Handling Tense Classroom Moments with Humor, Vulnerability, and Freewrites (Dini Parayitam, Lucas Mann, Yuly Restrepo, Laurel Flores Fantauzzo)

As teachers of creative writing, we inevitably encounter sensitive and unexpected moments of tension during classroom discussions. Here, teachers of undergraduates will share methods they employed for such pressure-point episodes, using self-revelation, humor, and on-the-spot writing exercises to bring students closer to a deeper sense of craft and ethics in their practice. Teachers hailing from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the United States will share strategies across genres and borders.

How to Hit the Ground Running: Strategies for Building Better Workshops (Lise Funderburg, Jessica Handler, Paul Lisicky, Sejal Shah, Angelique Stevens)

Writing workshops function best when participants feel engaged, respected, understood and inspired. But how do you establish this creative culture in the face of time constraints, overcrowding, or the inherent vulnerability of showing one's work to a bunch of strangers? Five creative writing instructors from universities and community-based programs share strategies for organically building trust and accountability through exercises, readings and the development of a shared critiquing language.

How We (Creative) Teach: Close Hyper Machine (Ben Gunsberg, Elizabeth Hutton, Abraham Smith, Sarah Blackman, Jennifer Colville)

The web is where today’s students do some of their most creative thinking. Yet most creative writing pedagogy stays fixed on static fields of text. Can instructors stay true to the field’s text-based fundamentals while also experimenting with the digital world’s generative, diverse, and multiple sensory streams? Bringing together secondary, college, and graduate-level instructors, this panel will explore the opportunities and challenges of expanding creative writing pedagogy’s semiotic reach.

I’m For Real: Minority Professors in the Predominately White Classroom (Allison Amend, Tung-Hui Hu, Mitchell Jackson, Adriana Ramirez, Dhipinder Walia)

It’s a familiar and problematic narrative: White teacher goes into the hood to “save” urban students. Beyond this reductive trope there are real issues when there is a race, class, sexual orientation, or privilege divide between educator and students, especially if the educator is the member of a minority or traditionally marginalized group. What are the responsibilities and challenges for minority instructors in representing their own identities as they seek to educate those who are different?

I Pledge Allegiance to More than Myself: Literary Citizenship in the Classroom (Tessa Mellas, Meagan Cass, Karen Craigo, Abigail Cloud, Jennie Frost)

No one becomes a writer in a vacuum. Five writers, who prioritize literary citizenship in their teaching, share strategies for involving students in book clubs, community workshops, reading series, press work, and other public activities. Pushing beyond problematic models of “outreach,” we ask students to consider the systems of guidance and support they have benefitted from, their relationships to their own communities, and how they might contribute in ways that evoke needed change.

Identity/Theft: A Conversation for the Classroom about Race, Appropriation, and Rachel Donezal (Arielle Silver, Rochelle Newman-Carrasco, Angela Bullock, Kiah Sherif)

Arising from a conversation on race, gender identity, culture, and appropriation sparked by the 2017 memoir from controversial self-identified “transracial” writer and activist, Rachel Donezal, this culturally diverse panel of educators and social activists seeks to address and explore current questions for the teachers and students of creative writing and literature in the postmodern global society.

Laboratory & Library: Workshop Models Conscious of Diversity and Difference (Sybil Baker, Rahul Mehta, Lisa Page, Brian Leung)

Van Tran Nguyen wrote in the New York Times about how workshops can be hostile to underrepresented and marginal voices. The panelists, all seasoned creative writing teachers, will discuss ways to design creative workshops that do not privilege the “masculine” concerns of craft over “art that is also political, historical, theoretical, ideological and philosophical.” We will discuss our own successes—and failures—in building courses that attempt to create more inclusive and expansive workshops.

Literary Public Citizen: The Laureate in the Community (Elline Lipkin, Robin Davidson, Joann Balingit, Yolanda Wisher, Katherine Young)

What does it mean to be a literary public citizen? One state, two city, and two township laureates discuss developing programs and strategies that effectively use poetry to build community and address local needs. Topics include best practices for addressing a wide range of audiences (in age, exposure to poetry, and interest), navigating bureaucratic structures, applying for grants, teaching in community settings, advocating for the arts, and nurturing one’s own career while serving as laureate.

Mindfulness in the Writing Workshop (Matthew Sharpe, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Robin Coste Lewis, Marie Mutsuki Mockett)

Mindfulness is a term derived from Buddhist teaching that means being aware of and nonjudgmental about what you’re experiencing at any moment. Cultivated by meditation, it is an ethical practice: taking responsibility for your mind’s activity for the benefit others and yourself. It's also a potential antidote to how weird workshops can be. Via discussion and a brief meditation, panelists and audience will explore how mindfulness may foster community and artistic expression in a workshop.

Narrative Medicine: The Write Prescription (Heather Bryant, Judith Hannan, Lisa Weinert, Jessica Hall)

Narrative medicine brings storytelling and writing into the realm of physical and mental health. Writing allows doctors, patients, and families to move through their experience. Writers contribute to the field leading workshops and shaping stories. Narrative medicine is also a powerful tool for marginalized and vulnerable populations. Panelists offer insights from writing and teaching in the field, including discussion of therapeutic writing and writing for advocacy and literacy development.

Open Pedagogies: Teaching Poetry Through Art Inside and Outside of the Workshop (Dorothea Lasky , Timothy Donnelly, Emily Skillings, Myung Mi Kim, Wendy Xu)

Poets often find themselves bringing poetry to students in a variety of settings. Nevertheless, poetry workshops are often taught the same way in all of these spaces—through the singular lens of poetry itself. While this approach can be productive in some classrooms, it has limitations. In this panel, we will provide practical suggestions for integrating art and poetry and will explore the immense creative output that happens when we open our teaching towards the influence of other art forms.

The People: Myth, Mantle, Muse? (Ellen Hagan, Nico Amador, Tanaya Winder, Cynthia Dewi Oka, Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela)

Writers working with criminalized, undocumented, and marginalized populations explore the idea of “the people” as a form of cultural capital that may obscure more complex dynamics. In the context of increasingly mainstream (at times tokenistic) platforms of diversity and resistance, they interrogate the expectations, challenges, and contradictions that writers who straddle institutional and grassroots spaces often navigate across different roles in order to forge lines of empathy and solidarity.

Plot is not a Four-Letter Word: Teaching the Art of Storytelling in Fiction Courses (Derek Nikitas, Julianna Baggott, Chantel Acevedo, Katharine Beutner, Bill Beverly)

Many workshops avoid discussing plot in depth, but this panel argues for the importance of teaching students to practice and analyze plot. Noted novelists-educators will offer inspiring possibilities for adding plot instruction to one’s repertoire, including: structure-based exercises, outlining (gasp!), “stealing” from screenwriting practice, reader-centered revision, playing with genre conventions, and artfully deploying storytelling elements (misdirection, withholding, reversals, etc.).

The Poetic Treatment: Contemporary Applications of the Ancient Art of Bibliotherapy (Katherine Litwin, Maggie Queeney, Mairead Case, Nora Segar, Jennifer Foerster)

Reading for therapeutic purposes has been practiced since antiquity, but how does this manifest today? Four practitioners detail their work introducing poetry outside of academic spaces, where reading and writing become a means of self-care. Drawing upon experiences with inmates, palliative-care patients, sexual assault survivors, and youth engaging in social protest, these facilitators explore the therapeutic potential of reading, discussing, and writing poetry in time of extreme stress.

The Politics of Craft (Sasha West, James Allen Hall, Lisa Olstein, Hasanthika Sirisena, Tiphanie Yanique)

Often, we make content carry the weight of politics in a classroom. But if the personal is always political partially because we are in bodies, then the body of a text—its craft—is always political, too. Panelists in multiple genres will share craft lessons that foreground the politics involved in making, reading, and teaching creative work. By embedding issues of power, erasure, point of view, voice, consumption, empathy, and community into craft, this panel widens a workshop’s aperture.

Reading and Writing the Body Free: Literature as a Subversive Force in Prison (Karen Smyte, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Roger Bonair-Agard, Randall Horton, Angel Pantoja)

How can literature and storytelling offer a means to interrogate, resist, speak to and speak back to mass incarceration? What transformative possibilities occur when people inside correctional facilities are given tools to speak, to control their narrative and define themselves outside their immediate circumstances? In what ways does reading and writing set bodies free, as well as offer those of us on the outside opportunities to witness?

(Re)Writing the Right Words: Revision Pedagogy (Gabriel Scala, Jason Harris, John Dufresne, John Lavelle, Susan Stabile)

This panel explores techniques to help instructors teach college students to revise. Based on field-tested experiences, let's analyze and discuss what works in the classroom. We'll focus on genre-specific strategies for the short story, novel, creative nonfiction, poetry, and scripts, as well as core principles of revision. From refining the portfolio method to designing exercises and optimizing workshop dynamics, our diverse multi-genre panel offers a range of tools for writing instructors.

Safety, Reporting, and Confidentiality in Memoir Classes (Glen Retief, Kathy Flann, Barbara Johnson, Nicole Lacy, Annalise Mabe)

Student memoirists experiment not just with formal approach, but also with disclosure itself—hence the need for confidentiality in nonfiction workshops. Yet both legal and professional ethics require memoir teachers to report situations where harm may come to students. This panel examines workshop confidentiality from legal, pedagogical, and mental health perspectives and offers practical advice about creating safe and nurturing classrooms.

Should You Pursue a Creative Writing PhD? (Leah Stewart, Michael Knight, Micah Dean Hicks, Gwen Kirby, Danielle Deulen)

Graduates of MFA programs already have a terminal degree in hand. When and why might they want to pursue another one? What are the aims and requirements of Creative Writing PhD programs? How do they help students on the job market and in the marketplace? Faculty, students, and graduates from four different universities will discuss how to decide whether to apply; how to choose a program; how the admissions process works; and how to succeed in doctoral study.

Slam Academy: The Importance of Spoken Word in the Poetry Curriculum (Molly Meacham, Dominique Christina, Sarah Kay, Jose Torres-Padilla, Levi Todd)

While slam poetry and spoken word have become increasingly popular, it’s rare to have them taught in poetry curricula. How do these spoken forms benefit students’ poetic craft? How can educators introduce a movement that is traditionally independent? Panel members (including high school teachers, professors, and teaching artists) will discuss how educators can teach an intersection of written and spoken word, and how balance between the poetic forms creates a well-rounded knowledge of poetry.

Starting from Zero: Teaching Poetry to the (Initially) Resistant (Taylor Mali, Mahogany L. Browne, Seema Reza, Jon Sands)

Veteran poetry teachers know that many people are resistant to the idea of writing or journaling even as a simple way to order and make sense of their own memories. Whether they are combat veterans suffering from PTSD, IV drug users in a needle exchange program, or just recalcitrant 7th graders who think poetry is stupid, sometimes the folks who could benefit most from a little introspection are the last to seek it out. Come hear stories of successful strategies for dealing with such resistance.

Stealing from STEM: Applying Pedagogies From Other Disciplines in the Creative Writing Classroom (Callista Buchen, DaMaris Hill, Jeremy Schraffenberger, Trent Hergenrader)

Sometimes, we imagine the creative writing classroom as its own special world, with its own organizing methodologies that isolate it from other fields. However, teaching practices borrowed and adapted from STEM fields can reinvigorate creative writing courses, providing new insights for students and instructors alike. From the application of technology and the scientific method to crafting formal poster presentations, this panel with detail ways to use STEM-based strategies in the classroom.

Teach Me All the Things: New Approaches to Multi- & Hybrid-Genre Writing (Susanna Childress, Paisley Rekdal, Marcela Sulak, Heather Sellers, Lee Upton)

While hybridity is all the rage in lit mags and progressive presses, how does blurring or opening genre play out in undergraduate and graduate classrooms where students approach genre with traditional boundaries and/or processes in mind? Our panelists, all multi- or hybrid-genre writers as well as multi-genre textbook authors and hybrid anthology editors, offer both personal and pedagogical perspectives to welcome students to the piquant, generative world of genre jambalaya.

Teaching / Sex / Writing (Andrea Lawlor, Samuel Ace, Vi Khi Nao, Ronaldo V. Wilson, Myriam Gurba)

What are the pleasures and dangers of teaching work about sex and working with student writing about sex? How can we balance our own vulnerabilities with those of our students? This panel will consider how teachers whose own work investigates sex—especially queer or non-normative sex—negotiate the classroom, how much of ourselves we bring to teaching in an era of heightened awareness of trauma. Five LGBTQ writers who teach in various contexts (K-12, college, community workshops) lay it all bare.

Teaching Essays of Resistance in Rural America: Disrupting White Spaces through Mixed-Media Interdisciplinary Forms (Rossina Zamora Liu, Jeremy Swanston, Bernadette Esposito, Charles Truong, Kelli Rushek)

How might writers, artists, and teachers teach emancipatory thought and action via mixed-media interdisciplinary forms? From collage essays about healthcare to b-boying about climate change, five panelists discuss how they use mixed media in their work and teaching to disrupt racially White spaces in rural America. What narratives of resistance do they and students tell via graphic arts, breaking, and collage forms? How do mixed media facilitate political voices in classrooms and communities?

Teaching the Undergraduate Novel-Writing Course (Michael Gills, Rebecca Meacham, Novuyo Tshuma, Lawrence Coates, Audrey Colombe)

Undergraduate fiction writers often do a lot of writing outside of classwork.

Many have novels in process. This panel brings together five teachers who have created practical models to meet the demand for an undergraduate workshop on writing a novel. Topics include the multi-semester workshop, published novels to use as models, the possibilities/limits of the outline, genre writing, managing the volume of student work produced, and particular revision strategies for novel workshops.
The Times They Are A-Changin’: The Pedagogy of Protest (Jenny Molberg, Kyle Dargan , D. Gilson, F. Douglas Brown, Jessica Hindman)

This panel considers writing as an instrument for political protest and social dissent. Panelists will explore theoretical reasons for using the literature and music of protest in the classroom, in addition to delivering practical, portable pedagogy that encourages well-researched and considerate expressions of dissent. This panel recognizes the personal as a form of social and political consciousness, invoking Adrienne Rich when she writes, “We must use what we have to invent what we desire.”

Translation--Not Really; Immigration--Not Exactly: Teaching Creative Writing in a Second Language (Yasmin Ramirez, Laura Cesarco Eglin, Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny, Daniel Ríos-Lopera, Minerva Laveaga)

As immigrants, writers, and professors, panelists will share how bilingualism shapes their creative writing classes, the unique language landscape, form, and diversity that emerge from multiculturalism. They will explore the experiences and challenges of teaching students in their non-native tongue, and when the professor him/herself is teaching in a second language. The panel will also look into the politics of writing, such as those of being un/documented, and the negotiation between cultures.

Tuesdays I’m the Teacher, Wednesdays the Student: The Shift from Grad Student to Professor and Back Again. (Jordan Rindenow, Victorio Reyes, Jameelah Lang, Dominika Wrozinski, Jen McClanaghan)

Many graduate programs encourage students to apply for adjunct positions, and therefore to experience what it’s like on the other side of the desk. This opens up a host of challenges, especially the difficulty of alternating between moderator and participant in workshops. Current and former PhD and MFA candidates discuss how their multiple shifting identities on a single campus influence their work as student and teacher. What do we learn about editing, kindness, generosity?

Walking Across the Hall--The Writer in the Literature Classroom (Tomas Morin, Dave Lucas, Elena Passarello, Michael Croley, Beth Bich Minh Nguyen)

As writers, how do we approach teaching literature versus creative writing? What happens when a writer is charged with teaching students different ways to read fiction, poetry, and essays, instead of ways to improve them? Five professors will both discuss and address their perspectives on craft, style, and theory and how writers can bolster and foster a new approach to the study of literature in the departments we serve.

When Students Write What We Dread To Read (Anna Monardo, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Nance Van Winckel, Lisa Fay Coutley, Robert Vivian)

When students' writing has you worried for their safety or the safety of others, what is best practice? Where to go for support? Especially in CNF workshops, but also in fiction and poetry, we encounter students' admissions of severe depression, anxiety, domestic abuse, or suicidal thoughts. How to respond compassionately while still honoring students' artistic process and privacy? Does your institution have a policy that obligates you to report concerns? Should your syllabus state that policy?

Workshops that Work, Workshops that Matter (Tom Williams, Joy Castro, Beth Nguyen, Matthew Salesses)

The workshop is the foundation of creative writing classes, but has it evolved to meet literary culture's diverse current needs? What conventions need rethinking? How do we talk about craft and not ignore its cultural implications? What practices might provide an encouraging and inclusive atmosphere for underrepresented students and limit reproductions of power? Four writers of color who teach share strategies to innovate and invigorate the workshop in ways that benefit all participants.

Writing Assignments for the Anthropocene (Katy Didden, Sasha West, Belle Boggs, Allegra Hyde, Hasanthika Sirisena)

What happens when the environment is not just the setting, but the subject of our work?  What tools can writers use to address the history of the land, and our current environmental crises? Panelists will offer practical assignments, useful across genres, for representing the environment—from research techniques, to methods of description and disruption. Our assignments aim to encourage students from diverse backgrounds to add their voices to the evolving body of eco-literature.

Readings