Feb. 4, 2008

AWP 2008 in New York City may now be over, but I'm only just beginning to digest the experience. And I'm only just beginning to sift through the literary journals, contest announcements, publishers' catalogs, and other treasures I collected at the Bookfair.

This year's Bookfair filled three cavernous exhibition halls at the Hilton New York. I tried to be diligent, but I know I didn't have the chance to pause at every booth and table. So I know I missed discovering (or becoming reacquainted with) a number of literary magazines and independent presses. But if you take a look at the exhibitors' list (you'll need eight pages to print it out), you may have some compassion for me and excuse the failure.

Each year AWP thoughtfully provides each conferencegoer with a sturdy totebag. The 2008 totebag seemed larger and even sturdier to me than previous years' offerings. Still, mine nearly burst with Bookfair gleanings, which include:


1. Contest Announcements

At this point, I'm pretty familiar with the contest scene, so I'm most interested in learning about new ones and made a real effort to find some. I also tend to favor those competitions that don't charge "entry" or "reading" or "processing" fees.

One new (as far as I can tell) competition that fits the no-fee bill is the State-to-State Poets Exchange. According to the announcement I picked up at the Bookfair, this is a collaborative effort between Rain Taxi Review of Books and the Poetry Society of America. "The State-to-State Poets Exchange offers emerging poets from New York City and Minnesota the opportunity to expand the reach of their work by connecting to an active literary community outside their home state. For the first event, an emerging New York City-based poet will travel to Minnesota, meet with seasoned editors and literary presenters, and give a public reading and on-stage interview focused on his or her current work in progress." The selected poet will also receive an honorarium of $500; the on-stage interview will be transcribed and published in Rain Taxi Review of Books. The second event will bring a Minnesota poet to New York.

For more information, including eligibility and submission guidelines, click here. (And hurry! The deadline for the New York poets to apply is February 15, 2008; Minnesota poets should check back with the Rain Taxi site for updates.)


2. Free Literary Magazines

Although I did fork over some cash for sample copies (and took advantage of a discounted subscription offer or two), the freebies, as usual, really pulled me in. Here are some of the print journals/reviews whose complimentary sample copies I snapped up:

American Literary Review
Blue Mesa Review
Dislocate
Hunger Mountain
New Madrid
Pank
Southern Indiana Review
Women's Review of Books


3. Publishers' Catalogs

As a writer, I'm interested in learning about publishers that might one day introduce my work to real, live readers. And as a reader and freelance book reviewer, I'm interested in knowing what titles the presses will soon be releasing. So I'm a glutton for the publishers' catalogs. Here are presses whose current catalogs also found their way from the Bookfair to my totebag:

Etruscan Press
Northwestern University Press
Paul Dry Books
Sarabande Books
University of California Press
University of Massachusetts Press
University of Nebraska Press
University of Nevada Press

I also picked up publicity materials from a few other independent presses, including Tinfish Press (which publishes experimental poetry from the Pacific), Catalyst Book Press (which focuses on literary nonfiction), and Red Morning Press (which is currently devoted to poetry, but may expand to including fiction and nonfiction as well).


4. News About Upcoming Literary Events

Event planners who attend the AWP Bookfair are generous with their flyers and brochures. Announcements about the Virginia Festival of the Book (March 26-30, 2008), the Alabama Book Festival (April 19, 2008), and the very full Poetry Society of America Spring 2008 calendar all ended up in my totebag.


I should add that these categories--contests, journals, catalogs, and events--reflect my own current interests. I could have captured plenty of brochures for MFA programs and writers' conferences and literary centers, too. But then I might have needed a still-sturdier totebag.

And there's always next year's Bookfair.

Feb. 2, 2008

Although many members of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) don't teach creative writing, the group serves as an umbrella professional organization for those who do. So it's not surprising that so much of the 2008 conference in New York City includes faculty readings and tributes, conversations on issues in creative writing pedagogy, and other teaching-related topics. Yesterday I attended two memorable sessions--each with a very different focus--that drove home that point even more powerfully.

A noon panel on "Translation in MFA Programs" discussed exactly that topic. I should disclose that the panel was developed and moderated by my friend B.J. Epstein, and since I respect her work so much I'm not surprised the panel was so good. It raised several questions that deserve further attention.

For instance: Is translation itself "creative" (or, as some panelists suggested, "re-creative") writing in the way that we regard other types of writing taught in MFA programs? Is it something we might consider a natural complement to other genres: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or children's writing, for example? Is it something writers might similarly pursue through study and practice and nurture into a profession? Is it something more MFA programs should offer, either as degree specializations or, at the very least, among workshops and seminars? These panelists sure made me think so. Listening to them, and thumbing through my mental files on all the authors I've read in translation--from Hans Christian Andersen to Leo Tolstoy--I realized that yes, the dedication to language, the focus on the "right" word or expression, and the sensitivity to literary forms and traditions and innovations that we consider essential to the works of accomplished poets or novelists characterizes equally those of the best literary translators.

As much as that first panel impressed my mind, the second one, titled "Absent Friends--Virginia Tech Memorial Reading"--moved my heart.

We all remember the tragedy that occurred on the Virginia Tech campus on April 16, 2007. For most of us, that was a terrible but distant news story. But for those members of Virginia Tech's creative writing community, it was a personal heartbreak, one they were ready to share via their writing at AWP.

In his introductory remarks, Robin Allnutt told us that this occasion marked the first time his faculty colleagues were participating together in a public memorial reading. He further signaled the session's exceptionality when he said that after they'd presented their work, the participants would not follow the common practice of taking audience questions.

As Allnutt read his essay, and was followed by Fred D'Aguiar's poetic evocation of his own slain student, I began to comprehend more fully how very unusual this conference session was going to be. But it wasn't until Katie Fallon came to the podium, and, visibly struggling to retain her composure, started reading a piece called "No Sanctuary," and brought us right into her freshman composition classroom in late August 2006, just after another (albeit infinitely less consequential) campus crisis, and introduced us to another student, one Fallon described as the epitome of serenity, who lost her life on April 16, that the tears came. Mine. Others'.

Just then, just as the atmosphere seemed most charged and Fallon's reading seemed nearly to crackle with grief--an alarm sounded.

Maybe if it had been another panel or another reading, someone would have ducked into the hall to investigate while the audience remained seated, and Fallon's reading, and the session itself, would have continued uninterrupted. But in a New York City where the World Trade Center no longer stands, in a session dedicated to remembering those absent friends from Virginia Tech, and precisely when Fallon was sharing her realization that despite the peacefulness her student had exuded there truly is "no sanctuary" in this world, we filed out. Quickly.

Downstairs in the hotel lobby there was no alarm. Nothing seemed amiss. Conference-goers filled the bar area, and conversations buzzed. As I left the building, heading uptown for my next event (this one off-site), I heard no sirens. I saw no emergency personnel. If we'd been in any danger in that second-floor meeting room, I discovered nothing about it when I checked online a few hours later.

I don't know if the faculty readers returned to their assigned room, if the session resumed, if other audience members came back. Perhaps I'll find out today. But I can't help worrying that this session, which the participants from Virginia Tech may have dared to hope might provide some healing-some serenity-did exactly the opposite.

Jan. 31, 2008

Shortly past 4:30 p.m. Joyce Carol Oates faced a hotel ballroom filled with people. She observed: "I have never been in the presence of so many fellow writers."

To which I say: Ditto.

Hearing the celebrated Oates read, and witnessing her ensuing onstage conversation with interviewer Bret Anthony Johnston, was just one piece of my Thursday at the 2008 conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. By the time I located a seat for the Oates event (and also discovered, happily, a former workshop classmate I hadn't seen since the summer of 2004), I'd put in a pretty full day:

9:00 a.m. I arrive at the Hilton New York for a panel session that holds special interest for me: "Shaping a Short Story Collection." Moderated by Ellen Litman, the panel also includes Brian Evenson, Daphne Kalotay, Deb Olin Unferth, and the always-lively Steve Almond. They share their histories of writing, revising, and pitching-and of the additional revising (not to mention drafting of new material) required to continue "shaping" their books even once they'd found interested agents and/or publishers. It's encouraging to know that these talented authors, with their published collections, seem to have struggled with some of the same issues I'm confronting with my unpublished one.

10:15 a.m. Time to switch hotels. This year's conference is so big that even the capacious Hilton can't accommodate all the events. So I head over to the nearby Sheraton for readings by poets and writers who represent writing programs based at colleges of The City University of New York (CUNY--disclosure: CUNY is my employer, and if this conference weren't happening I'd be at my CUNY desk right now). We hear three poetry readings (courtesy of Julie Agoos, Meena Alexander, and Kimiko Hahn). Then prose takes over: Elizabeth Nunez reads from her novel, Grace, and Frederic Tuten shares an essay that originally appeared in the erstwhile New York Times "Writers on Writing" column.

11:45 a.m. "I'm starving," I tell myself as I leave the Sheraton and begin searching for a quick lunch (deciding soon enough on a tuna sandwich from a nearby deli). Then I remember where I'm going next: a noon session featuring the editor of and several contributors to the newly-revised edition of Blood to Remember (Time Being Books), an anthology of American poetry on the Holocaust. Suddenly I don't feel quite so hungry; I can eat only half the sandwich.

1:15 p.m. After the anthology session ends, I face a choice: I can attend any one of several sessions I've circled in my program (including "Health and Healing: A Reading with the Bellevue Literary Review," "The Alliance of Artists' Communities: A Sampler of Residencies for Writers," and "New Historical Fiction"), or I can take my first tour of the Bookfair. I choose the latter. (You'll find an explanation of the Bookfair's appeal in my previous dispatch.)

3:00 p.m. A panel convenes to discuss "Mentorship vs. Workshop: The Pedagogy of Low Residency Programs." Moderated by Andrew Gray, who directs the optional-residency program at the University of British Columbia, the panel focuses on structural and philosophical differences within the ever-growing cluster of graduate programs in creative writing known as "low-residency" (or brief-residency) programs. I listen as one audience member, who identifies herself as someone teaching in a low-residency program not represented on the panel, chimes in with a provocative question. She wonders how to change a public conception of low-residency programs as mere instruments of convenience. "Low-res" students can indeed continue living where they wish and working full-time while they earn a graduate degree, and thus do enjoy a degree of flexibility and "convenience" that's more elusive in most traditional, campus-based programs. But the speaker's point is that low-res programs can also offer a superior educational experience. Which leaves me wondering if instead of focusing on "Mentorship vs. Workshop," a future AWP conference may include a session on "Low-res vs. Campus-based" graduate programs.

And that brings me back to...

Shortly past 4:30 p.m. Joyce Carol Oates faces a hotel ballroom filled with people. She observes: "I have never been in the presence of so many fellow writers."

Jan. 30, 2008

For the seventh time in eight years--2006 was my only year "off"--I'm about to immerse myself in the multi-day event known as the annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). But this will be the first time I'll be writing about the goings-on for The Writer's readers, sending dispatches for posting right here on the magazine's Web site.

Now 40 years old, AWP counts among its members hundreds of college and university writing programs; dozens of writing conferences and centers; and, importantly, thousands of individual writers. They'll all be represented at the convocation that begins today in New York City (next year the conference moves to Chicago; Denver will be the site in 2010). You can get a sense of the amazing range of events by perusing the conference schedule. If that's too overwhelming (and it might be!), you can see a more streamlined list of featured participants here.

I'll be filling you in on panels and readings I attend; I'll also share with you my findings from what's arguably my favorite element of the entire conference: the Bookfair, where a writer can walk up and down aisles filled with displays from literary journals, independent and university presses, and creative writing programs, conferences, and organizations.

More than 7,000 people have registered for this year's AWP conference. But you don't have to fight the crowds. Just come right back here to read these reports. See you soon!

Erika Dreifus is a contributing editor for The Writer. She lives in New York City and blogs about writing, publishing and books at www.practicing-writing.blogspot.com.

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