AWP Redux

I was in DC this past week for the Associated Writing Programs Conference. AWP is a weird animal and a full debrief with my husband was helpful in moving towards some sort of clarity around specific kinds of interactions that pervade my experiences at this annual industry event.

The Bookfair, while being a great opportunity to check out new books and authors is also a place of hunger and economic transaction, and a place of presumed connections, power relationships, and deep assumptions that makes it difficult to bring authentic interactions. People read nametags and treat one another accordingly to name/face recognition. Going from a week at the Naropa Authentic Leadership program to AWP was a mindfuck. Opposite ends of the human spectrum.

While standing at a friend's table, several writers came up to aggressively market their manuscripts and make editorial sales pitches.

Do you take bilingual work? No, I don't mean translation work, I mean work that incorporates both Spanish and English. You're not the publisher? When are they coming back?

At more than one table, the initial greeting went like this:

Are you a writer? Well we have a contest, let me tell you about it...

And still worse - at one small journal's table that devotes each issue to a different geographic region and/or country, the pitch went like this:

We sell subscriptions. Let me show you our Asia issue...

At one small press journal the interaction went like this:

Oh, we published your work in our first issue.

That was 2 years ago and I didn't even submit that poem - my collaborator did and the issue showed up in my mailbox which is how I learned about your xeroxed zine. Context, yo!

And at another table, where I got hustled into buying at full price on Day 1(and regret it b/c I like the performative interaction of the haggle and give-and-take) - the interaction was:

Oh yeah, I read a manuscript from you.

That was 7 years ago and a lot has happened since. Ultimately the only item I paid full price from at the fair was from this particular vendor. Not because they read my manuscript 7 years ago, but because we shared friends in common and I wanted to offer my economic support of their project by not being a hardass about retail price, and the editor of the book I purchased is a colleague from Seattle with an incredibly bright mind and innovative sensibility. But writers know the real cost of printing a book and what constitutes mark-up and profit. That's why everyone waits until the last day of the Fair to purchase or collect freebies. One partner in the pair who was not making the sales pitch said "Oh, poetry, that's discounted." To which the other partner said, "NO. It's an anthology. No discount."

The best moments at AWP for me were hearing and seeing John Wesley Harding and Josh Ritter read from their new novels and perform folk songs. Kay Ryan is a laugh riot - skillful and cutting with her humor, as in cutting through. I loved her and her work and more poet laureates should be like Kay Ryan. I also deeply enjoyed the multimedia doc poetics program with Kwame Dawes and Natasha Trethewey who are, as always, doing incredible work. Their cohorts on the panel, I was less interested in for their limited stakes in the communities that they are studying and working with.

I also went on a tour of the Library of Congress and saw where the Poet Laureate offices.



The building itself was incredibly rich with literary thought and intention.


And DC in general is an interesting literary town. The conference, and my hotel room were based at the Marriott Wardman Park - the same place that Langston Hughes once worked as a busboy and was discovered by Vachel Lindsay. Elsewhere around town, the monumental presence of Walt Whitman in Dupont Circle.



And what was Naropa like, you ask? Like going home.