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2023 AWP Conference Schedule

The #AWP23 Conference & Bookfair in Seattle, Washington schedule is searchable by day, time, title, description, participants, and type of event. This schedule is subject to change. A version accessible to screen readers is also available.

Please note: The schedule you build on awpwriter.org will not transfer to the mobile app or the virtual conference platform as these systems are independent.

Scroll over participants’ names in blue to read their biographies.

 

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Wednesday, March 8, 2023

12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Virtual

V101.

50 Years of Fire: A Reading to Celebrate AGNI

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For fifty years, AGNI has published international literature that transforms, combusts, and burns bright. Join us for a virtual reading that celebrates AGNI’s legacy and envisions its future with some of our dynamic contributors. These poets, writers, and translators from across the globe will come together to give a reading and discuss their experiences with the magazine’s intimate, rigorous editorial process.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Cyrus Cassells is the current Poet Laureate of Texas. His eighth book is The World That the Shooter Left Us (Four Way Books, 2022). Among his several honors: a Guggenheim fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, a Lambda Literary Award, two NEA grants, and an NAACP Image Award finalist nomination.


Twitter Username: CyrusCc37

Jamie Quatro is the author of the story collection I Want To Show You More and the novel Fire Sermon, both from Grove Press. A visiting professor in the MFA program at Sewanee and a contributing editor at Oxford American, she lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.


Twitter Username: jamiequatro

Website: www.jamiequatro.com

Dzvinia Orlowsky is an award-winning author of six poetry collections including Bad Harvest. She is co-recipient of an NEA translation grant and co-translator of Eccentric Days of Hope & Sorrow: Selected Poems by Natalka Bilotserkivets, a finalist for the 2022 International Griffin Poetry Prize.


Twitter Username: DzviniaOrlowsky

Lia Purpura authored nine collections (essays, poems, and translations) most recently, All the Fierce Tethers (essays.) Her awards include Guggenheim, NEA, and Fulbright Fellowships, and five Pushcarts. On Looking (essays) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches at UMBC.


Twitter Username: @LiaPurpura

Website: www.liapurpura.com

Jennifer Alise Drew is AGNI’s editor at large and has been an editor at the magazine since 2003. She’s worked as an editor for numerous other publishers including Grove/Atlantic, Houghton Mifflin, Open City Books, and Simon & Schuster, and has published essays in The Iowa Review, Slice, and others.


Twitter Username: jenalisedrew

Virtual

V102.

A Tribute to Irena Klepfisz

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Respected poets and scholars celebrate the contributions of Irena Klepfisz who will then read from her work. Klepfisz’s poetry is a fierce wave of truth graced with illuminating linguistic innovations, unafraid to engage with difficult themes: the brutal deaths in the Shoah, the unending Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the darkest moment of an immigrant’s journey. Klepfisz is a unique link between the Holocaust, the Yiddish revival, Jewish support for Palestinian human rights, and lesbian love.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Minnie Bruce Pratt's poetry has received the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets, the ALA Gay and Lesbian Book Award, a Lambda Literary, and a Publishing Triangle Award. Crime Against Nature, on her relationship with her sons as a lesbian mother, was a New York Times Notable Book.


Twitter Username: MBPratt

Chana Kronfeld translated with Chana Bloch Amichai’s Open Closed Open (PEN Translation Prize) and The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch. She coedited and translated Harshav's Collected Poetry from Yiddish into Hebrew and won the Akavyahu Lifetime Achievement Award for research on Hebrew and Yiddish poetry.

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, and AIDS historian. Her 20th book is Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993, and prior to that: Maggie Terry, a novel of murder and intrigue published by The Feminist Press.


Twitter Username: SarahSchulman3

Irena Klepfisz is a lesbian poet, activist, essayist, Yiddishist, and Yiddish translator. Her poetic themes include immigration to the US, office work, the Isaeli-Palestinian conflict, coming out, and bilingualism. Wesleyan UP is publishing Her Birth and Later Years: New and Selected Poems 1971-2021.

Julie R. Enszer, PhD, is the author of Avowed, Lilith's Demons, Sisterhood, and Handmade Love. She is the editor of The Complete Works of Pat Parker and Milk & Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry; both were finalists for a Lammy. Enszer is the editor and publisher of Sinister Wisdom.

Virtual

V103.

Adapting a Piece of Literature for the Stage

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How do you translate the immersive world of a literature work into a living, breathing piece of theatre? This conversation will explore the difference between the two mediums of storytelling, tips to consider, and how some dramatists have approached this with their own works. In addition to craft perspective, moderator Jessica Lit, Director of Business Affairs for the Dramatists Guild of America, will offer advice on the logistics of licensing and practical things to consider.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Jessica Lit (she/her) serves as the director of business affairs for the Dramatists Guild. In addition, Jessica has her own solo law practice, The Lit Esquire PLLC, aimed at educating artists of all disciplines about their legal rights to empower them to take control of their careers.

Lauren Gunderson has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You and The Book of Will. She is also the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and a finalist for the Blackburn Prize. LaurenGunderson.com


Twitter Username: LalaTellsAStory

Roger Q. Mason (they/them) was recently touted by The Brooklyn Rail as "quickly becoming one of the most significant playwrights of the decade." Their playwriting has been seen on Broadway (Circle in the Square Reading Series), Off and Off-Off-Broadway, and regionally. Insta: @rogerq.mason.


Twitter Username: RogerQMason

Caridad Svich is a playwright-poet, lyricist, translator, and editor. She receive the 2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement, has written over fifty plays and has adapted works by Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Shakespeare, and others.


Twitter Username: Csvich

Virtual

V103B.

Bodies in Archives: Researching Personhood, Researching as a Person

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What does it mean to research the self? What’s it like to be a body in an archive? What happens when a living person comes into contact with physical and historical objects which they hope to turn into literature? In this panel, a diverse group of inter-genre writers will discuss their processes and experiences for research-based writing, with a specific focus on embodied research and the ethics of researching communities with whom one holds a visceral or personal connection.


This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Leora Fridman is author of My Fault and Static Palace, among other works of prose, poetry, and translation. She holds degrees with honors from Brown University and University of Massachusetts Amherst, and has taught and organized arts programming for universities and community groups since 2004.


Twitter Username: ummleora

Website: leorafridman.com

Jenn Shapland is a writer and archivist living in New Mexico. Her first book, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award and won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award. Her second book, Thin Skin, will be published by Pantheon Books in August 2023.


Twitter Username: jennshapland

Lauren Gabrielle Fournier is a writer and researcher who focuses on hybrid and multigenre writing, including autotheory and autofiction, as practices of storytelling and philosophical inquiry. Her first book is Autotheory as Feminist Practice, and her novella The Barista Boys is forthcoming.


Twitter Username: lgfournier

Arisa White is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and author of Who's Your Daddy and Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart. She collaborates with other artists to expand readership for poetry and to center the narratives of queer IBPOC. White is an assistant professor of creative writing at Colby College.

Julietta Singh is a decolonial scholar and nonfiction writer whose books include The Breaks, No Archive Will Restore You, and Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism & Decolonial Entanglements.

Virtual

V104.

Bury Me in the Motherland; Rituals of Death, Burial, and Repatriation in African Literature

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This panel will consist of African writers discussing the concerns, challenges, and rewards of writing about death and burial rites. What rituals show up on the page? How do effects colonization / postcolonization of African societies show up in death and burial rites. Particular focus will be given to the practice of repatriation of remains whether within countries or internationally. What is the importance of writing the desire to be buried at ‘home’?



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Twitter Username: SamuelKerubu

Tola Abraham is a fiction and nonfiction writer. Originally from Lagos, Nigeria, she lives in Missouri where she teaches creative writing at the University of Missouri at Saint Louis. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her debut novel Black Sunday is available now.


Twitter Username: thatTola

Olufunke Ogundimu is a PhD student in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and assistant fiction editor at Prairie Schooner. She is a graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas MFA program. A 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing finalist, and a Pushcart Prize winner.


Twitter Username: oluwafumike

Website: www.olufunkeogundimu.com

Saddiq Dzukogi is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla, winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and a finalist for the Nigeria Prize for Literature, and Julie Suk Award. He is an assistant professor of English and affiliate faculty of African American studies at Mississippi State University.


Twitter Username: SaddiqDzukogi

Virtual

V105.

Climate Novels Reimagined: Innovative Publishing to Confront the Climate Crisis

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For years, popular climate fiction has primarily been future dystopias that presuppose our failure in today’s battle against fossil fuels. Scientists agree that massive immediate change can still save the planet. Yet traditional publishing's lead time of two to three years is anything but immediate. These climate writers turned to various forms of arts activism, including a new, rapid publishing model for an urgent, contemporary climate literature that charts a path to victory and are seeking new novels.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Aya de León, award-winning novelist, teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley. Aya seeks diverse climate justice novels in popular genres from authors of all genders. She is acquiring editor at Fighting Chance Books, a She Writes Press imprint, and she works on climate with the Movement for Black Lives.


Twitter Username: ayadeleon

Website: https://ayadeleon.wordpress.com

Emily Wilson is a writer in San Francisco who has work in different outlets, including Daily Beast, Alta, California magazine, California Teacher, Hyperallergic, Women's Media Center, San Francisco Classical Voice, Latino USA, and 48 Hills. For years she taught at City College of San Francisco.


Twitter Username: ehw415

Sim Kern is a Gulf Coast environmental journalist and speculative cli-fi writer. Their debut novella, Depart!, Depart!, was an Otherwise Award nominee, and the first installment of their YA sci-fi trilogy, Seeds for the Swarm, is forthcoming from Stelliform Press in fall 2022.


Twitter Username: sim_kern

Website: https://www.simkern.com/

Lauren James is the twice Carnegie-nominated British author of many Young Adult novels, including Green Rising and The Loneliest Girl in the Universe. She is a Royal Fellow, and the founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League.


Twitter Username: lauren_e_james

Virtual

V106.

Creative Writing beyond the Academy: The Scholarship of Creative Practice

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The panel will discuss the new scholarly volume Creative Writing Beyond the Academy in which creative writing scholars reflect upon the practice of writing. The editors and contributors to this work will explain how academic creative writing scholars examine creative practice in the book through reflection, exegesis, and research. The panelists will also discuss the myths and lore around writing practices and examine ways forward for the scholarship of creative practice.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Sam Meekings is associate professor of creative writing at Northwestern University in Qatar. He is the author of Under Fishbone Clouds (called a poetic evocation of the country and its people by the New York Times), and the editor of Creative Writing Scholars on the Publishing Trade (Routledge, 2021)


Twitter Username: SMeekings

Marshall Moore is a course leader and senior lecturer at Falmouth University in the UK. He teaches creative writing and publishing. He holds a PhD in creative writing from Aberystwyth University. Prior to moving to Britain, he worked in higher education in Hong Kong and Korea for fifteen years.


Twitter Username: marshallsmoore

Lania Knight lives in England and lectures at Open University. Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Rattle, Post Road, Fourth Genre, and elsewhere. She has a poetry pamphlet and two novels, and was a finalist for a Lambda Award. A collection of essays is forthcoming from Signal 8 Press.


Twitter Username: laniaknight

Website: www.laniaknight.com

Virtual

V107.

Crip Lyric

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How does crip literary writing convey intense personal emotion and experience while attending to social conditions for historical trauma, networks of care, access, and collective thriving in a way that a lyric "I" might shift toward a lyric "we"? In a reading and discussion, panelists center a poetics of queer-of-color disability and chronic illness by asking how cripping our attention to imagination, memory, dream, the senses, bodily rhythms, and environment disrupts the unified lyric subject.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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heidi andrea restrepo rhodes is a queer, brown, disabled poet, artist, cultural worker, and scholar. Her manuscript The Inheritance of Haunting was awarded the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019). She currently lives in southern California.

Gwendolyn Paradice is queer, hard of hearing, and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. They write prose are the author of More Enduring for Having Been Broken (Black Lawrence Press) and coauthor of Carnival Bound (or, please unwrap me) (The Cupboard Pamphlet). They reside and teach in Kentucky.

Tala Khanmalek is a writer and scholar who teaches at CSU Fullerton. She was a VONA fellow, Anaphora Arts fellow, and Periplus Fellowship finalist and is currently a RAWI mentee. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Meridian, Barzakh, Zoeglossia, and Indiana Review.

Virtual

V108.

Debuting as a "senior" writer: Why are there never "50 over 50" features?

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Raymond Carver. Anna Sewell. Frank McCourt. Laura Ingalls Wilder. Each had their debut after the age of 50. In an industry obsessed with youth, no one ever talks about the mental overload of being an older writer whose first full-length publication occurs long after their twenty-ninth year. We'll give tips for writers till trying to get their big break after years of "hobby" writing or entering an MFA program next to writers young enough to be their children (or grandchildren).



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Wendy Wimmer's writing has appeared in Blackbird, Per Contra, Barrelhouse, Waxwing, Paper Darts, and more. She holds a master of arts in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and is a Black Mountain Institute PhD fellow at UNLV. She is fiction editor of Witness magazine.


Twitter Username: wendywimmer

Website: http://www.wendywimmer.com

Julie Silverman, graduate of Chatham University, MFA creative nonfiction 2020 concentration in nature writing, published in Ad Astra, Ekphrastic Review, Huffington Post, The Under Review, Celestal Review, Griffith Observer, and regular contributor to Pittsburgh Post Gazette's Stargazer column.


Twitter Username: julia_silverman

Lynda Montgomery began writing fiction at the age of 39, and over the subsequent thirteen years has been published in several journals and has been a fellow at Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, and VCCA. In 2020 she received an Ohio Art Council Individual Excellence Award for fiction.


Twitter Username: theotherlynda

Christina Clancy is the author of Shoulder Season and The Second Home (St. Martin's Press). Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Sun, Glimmer Train Stories, Hobart, Pleiades, and on Wisconsin Public Radio. She has a PhD in creative writing from UW-Milwaukee.


Twitter Username: @christi_clancy

Virtual

V109.

Fearless: Indian Poets Celebrate Diversity in the Face of Hindu Nationalism

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Indian American poets celebrate the diversity of their belief systems, their different backgrounds, religions and cultures, and discuss the effects of right-wing nationalism in their country of origin, India, where moves to suppress minorities and free speech are on the rise. The poets, from Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities, will express their concerns about intolerance and the rise of nationalism both in India and the US—which is their home now—and how it affects their work.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Zilka Joseph has authored five books, was nominated for Pushcart, the ABA, and PEN awards. She was a finalist for the Foreword Indies Book Award twice. In Our Beautiful Bones is her newest book. Her work is influenced by Indian and Western cultures, and her Bene Israel roots. www.zilkajoseph.com

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island, WWBA Poet of the Year, and author of We Are Not a Museum, Thirtha, Behind Dark Waters, Trace, Thirteen Days to Let Go, The Singer of Alleppey, and Slow Ripening, is an award winning poet who teaches in SUNY, Nassau.


Twitter Username: alimarp

Website: www.pramilav.com

Ralph Nazareth, has published four books of poetry and has read at venues in the US and abroad. He has taught for forty years—in colleges, schools and maximum-security prisons. The managing editor of Yuganta Press, he is also on the board of GraceWorks, Inc., an international nonprofit foundation.

Sophia Naz has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her work features in numerous literary journals. She has authored the poetry collections Peripheries, Pointillism, Date Palms, and Shehnaz, a biography. Open Zero, her fourth poetry collection, published from Yoda Press in 2021.


Twitter Username: Sophi_Naz

Website: www.sophianaz.com

Virtual

V110.

Ghosts, Portals, and Other Worlds: The Surreal in Contemporary Fiction

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Writers of literary fiction often find the boundaries between the possible and impossible in their work disintegrating in strange, unexpected ways. What gives rise to this shift, and how do we navigate the surreal in our lives and work? How can models like Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and George Saunders guide us? What techniques can help bring the speculative to life in a compelling and convincing manner? Acclaimed authors who’ve explored these questions will share insights and advice.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Joy Baglio's fiction appears in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. A recipient of  fellowships from Yaddo, Bread Loaf, The Elizabeth George Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center, she is the founder of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop.


Twitter Username: JoyBaglio

Website: www.joybaglio.com

Matthew Lansburgh's collection of linked stories, Outside Is the Ocean, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Award and the 2018 Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. He has received fellowships from Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Yaddo, and MacDowell.


Twitter Username: senorlansburgh

Website: www.matthewlansburgh.com

Laura van den Berg is the author of two novels, most recently The Third Hotel, and two story collections. Her third collection, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, is forthcoming. Her honors include the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, and an O. Henry Award


Twitter Username: lvandenberg

Website: http://www.lauravandenberg.com/

Kevin Brockmeier has published nine books of (mostly) fiction, including, most recently, a collection of 100 very short stories called The Ghost Variations. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and he lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Jennifer Pullen is an assistant professor of creative writing at Ohio Northern University (PhD Ohio University, MFA Eastern Washington University). She has a chapbook, A Bead of Amber on Her Tongue with Omnidawn Press. Her textbook, Writing Fantasy Fiction, is upcoming from Bloomsbury Academic.


Twitter Username: Jpullen19

Virtual

V111.

Native Survivance, Defiance, and Culture-Keeping through Memoir

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Often written about and not often enough written by, Native Americans are dispelling the mainstream cultural amnesia that surrounds the West’s first peoples through the genre of memoir. In this panel, three distinctive Californian Indian memoirists—a rising literary light, an award-winning poet-professor, and a celebrated storyteller and tribal leader—share their journeys navigating Indigenous identity in relation to the land, across continents, and through time.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Carolann Jane Duro (Maara'yam & Kumeyaay desc.) is the founder of Indigenous Book Club and Quiet Quail Books. Indigenous Book Club is an online literary community that reads Native authors and literature. Quiet Quail Books is an Indigenous independent popup book store.


Twitter Username: indigbookclub

Deborah A. Miranda (Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation & Chumash) is author of Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir; poetry collections Indian Cartography, The Zen of La Llorona, Raised by Humans, and Altar for Broken Things. She is Thomas Broadus Professor of English emerita at Washington and Lee University.

Greg Sarris received his PhD in modern thought and literature from Stanford University and is a Walter Gore Awardee for excellence in teaching. He is Distinguished Emeritus Graton Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Sonoma State University, and the author and multiple awardee of published books.


Twitter Username: TheGregSarris

Website: www.greg-sarris.com

Ursula Pike is the author of An Indian among los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir from Heyday Books. She is a member of the Karuk Tribe and earned her MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has appeared in LitHub, Yellow Medicine Review, and Ligeia magazine.


Twitter Username: urs_pike

Virtual

V112.

Poetic License: Negotiating Creative Impulses in the Context of Translation

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This multigenre panel focuses on strategies for writer / translators to negotiate their creative impulses in the context of translation. Focuses include how creative writers can ethically and responsibly utilize their creativity when translating, the potential merits and drawbacks of being a creative writer who translates, and how literary translators might be able to better understand the intentions of the writers they translate because of their background as writers themselves.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Lauren Brazeal Garza is a PhD candidate in literature with a focus on translation studies at UT Dallas, where she is translating narratives of members of the indigenous Waorani Nation of Amazonian Ecuador. Her poetry collections include the full-length, Gutter, in addition to two chapbooks.


Twitter Username: lbrazealgarza

Website: Www.lbrazealgarza.com

p joshua laskey, codirector of both Stories on Stage Sacramento and Theater Galatea, has published original and self-translated short stories, flash fiction, and poetry as well as produced original, adapted, and translated plays—including a new version of Federico García Lorca’s Mariana Pineda.

Jonathan Stalling is a poet, translator, curator, and scholar, and Harold J & Ruth Newman Chair of US-China Studies, professor of International Studies, affiliate professor of English, editor of Chinese Literature and Thought Today, and curator of the Chinese Literature Translation Archive.

Jami Proctor Xu is a bilingual poet, translator, and mother. Her poems, essays, and translations have been published in anthologies around the world. She is a recipient of a Zhujiang Poetry Award, and her translation of Song Lin's collection, Sunday Sparrows, won the Northern California Book Award.

Cindy Lynn Brown is Danish / American poet, novelist, and literary translator with a degree in literature and creative writing. She is translated into multiple languages and has performed at festivals throughout the world. She is the organizer of an international poetry festival in Denmark.


Twitter Username: cindylynn_brown

Virtual

V113.

Reclaiming Meter: Strategies for Contemporary Poem-Making

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In a poetic context where most work is not overtly metrical, metrical poems surprise. They can make room for new modes of being and saying, a potential realized by poets from Millay to Brooks to Patricia Smith. Each panelist will consider a metrical poem that has shaped their poetic practice—including work in noniambic meters—and will share a prompt inspired by the poem. We’ll explore meter, employed directly and as it informs free verse, as a radical, generative force in contemporary poetry.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Sophia Stid is a poet from California. She is the Ecotone Postgraduate Fellow at UNC Wilmington, where she teaches creative writing and serves as the associate editor of Ecotone. Her chapbook Whistler's Mother was published by Bull City Press in 2021.

Chad Abushanab is the author of The Last Visit, winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. His poems appear in The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, Best New Poets, Southern Poetry Review, Ecotone, and others. He is an assistant professor of English at Bemidji State University in Minnesota.


Twitter Username: chadabushanab

Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Ornament, winner of the Vassar Miller Prize, and the chapbook Smaller Songs, from St Brigid Press. The recipient of an NC Arts Council Fellowship in literature, she is the editor of Ecotone and an editor of Lookout Books, and teaches at UNC Wilmington.


Twitter Username: aproflection

Website: http://todointhenewyear.net

Jenna Le, MD, is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Six Rivers and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora. Her poetry, fiction, essays, criticism, and translations appear in AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, The Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere.

Alexis Sears is the author of Out of Order, winner of the 2021 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. She received her bachelor of arts degree from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and her MFA in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been widely published in literary journals.


Twitter Username: alexissearspoet

Virtual

V114.

Speculating Us from Where We Stand: Writing Culture into Prose and Poetry

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In “A Few Rules for Speculating the Future,” Octavia E. Butler wrote, "where we stand determines what we can see." Join the editors of the speculative anthology Infinite Constellations in a conversation with contributors exploring how culture informs their writing.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Shalewa Mackall is an artist and educator dedicated to liberatory creative practice. A 2019 Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow, her publications include Infinite Constellations: Speculating Us (eds. Khadija Queen and K. Ibura), Obsidian, Peregrine Journal, Mom Egg Review, and Visible Poetry Project.

Shreya Ila Anasuya is a writer and researcher from Calcutta, India. Shreya's fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sword and Kettle Press, and the anthology Magical Woman (Hachette India). Her work has been recognized with an Otherwise Fellowship.


Twitter Username: thresholdrose

Khadijah Queen is the author of six books of poetry and hybrid prose, including Anodyne, Conduit, and I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On. Her verse play Non-Sequitur won the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers. She teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech.


Twitter Username: Authorkq

Website: http://khadijahqueen.com

K. Ibura is a writer from New Orleans—the traditional territory of the Chitimacha Tribe. She is author of two speculative short story collections and a middle grade novel. She is also coeditor of the identity and culture-focused anthology, Infinite Constellations. A YA novel is forthcoming.


Twitter Username: K_Ibura

Virtual

V115.

Spoken Word, Poetry, and Language as Theatre

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Although some poetry may be written for the page to be consumed privately, poetry as an art form is steeped in the history of oral storytelling. Spoken word, slam poetry, and poetry alike can serve as intimate and passionate dialogues between the writer and the audience. Join us for a conversation with playwrights who have translated their passion for these art forms into their works for the stage in powerful, new ways.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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ayla xuân chi sullivan (they/them) is your neighborhood Black, Vietnamese, Queer, and Trans performance artist out here tryna make a world without cages by any means necessary. They have two degrees, one mutual aid cooperative (Shift 23 Media), and projects spanning across film, television, and theater.

Elaine Romero is an award-winning US playwright. Her plays have been presented across the US and abroad. TITLE IX appeared in the 2017 Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. She is an associate professor at the University of Arizona in the School of Theatre, Film, and Television.


Twitter Username: ElaineRomero

Virtual

V117.

The Chronic: Medicine and the Body in Writing

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Writing into chronic illness is an act of liberation. Through multiple genres—poetry, essays, and fiction—five award-winning writers with chronic illnesses explore their first-hand experiences of navigating disabilities, both visible and invisible, to reclaim their narratives, re-storying their lives against the multiple erasures enacted against them. The reading speaks back against ableist recovery and cripspiration stories.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Rajiv Mohabir is the author of three collections of poetry including Cutlish (Four Way Books, Finalist for the NBCC), a memoir, Antiman (Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award), and a collection of translations I Even Regret Night (Kaya Press, Winner of the HMLTA from the Academy of American Poets).


Twitter Username: rajivmohabir

Website: rajivmohabir.com

Anjoli Roy is the author of Enter the Navel: For the Love of Creative Nonfiction, and cohost of It's Lit, a literature and music podcast that has featured more than 100 writers to date. With a PhD in English from the University of Hawai‘i, she is a VONA alum and a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee.


Twitter Username: anjoliroy

Website: www.anjoliroy.com

Soma Mei Sheng Frazier's debut novel is forthcoming from Holt in 2024, repped by Victoria Sanders & Associates. She is founding editor of Subnivean, SUNY Oswego's undergraduate-staffed literary publication. Her work has appeared in or won nods from HBO, Zoetrope-All Story, ZYZZYVA, Hyphen, and Story.


Twitter Username: somameisheng

Website: http://enizagam.org

heidi andrea restrepo rhodes is a queer, brown, disabled poet, artist, cultural worker, and scholar. Her manuscript The Inheritance of Haunting was awarded the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019). She currently lives in Southern California.

A.H. Reaume is a disabled essayist and fiction writer who was published in Disability Visibility, an anthology of the best personal essays about disability, and wrote a column about writing and disability for Open Book. She has been published in Longreads, This magazine, Time, and the Guardian.


Twitter Username: a_h_reaume

Virtual

V118.

The Path through the Swamp: Revision Strategies and Processes

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Many writers believe that revising one's work is the most challenging task writers face. What are the myriad ways we, as writers, approach revision? How do we get through the scariest, most daunting "swamps" of rough drafts? Are there maps, guideposts, and coping mechanisms we can use to get from point A to B and beyond? Five acclaimed writers discuss their revision processes and share tips, strategies, and approaches for revising stories and novels—and making our work as strong as it can be.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Matthew Lansburgh's collection of linked stories, Outside Is the Ocean, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Award and the 2018 Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. He has received fellowships from Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Yaddo, and MacDowell.


Twitter Username: senorlansburgh

Website: www.matthewlansburgh.com

Joy Baglio's fiction appears in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She's received fellowships from Yaddo, Bread Loaf, The Elizabeth George Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center, and is the founder of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop.


Twitter Username: JoyBaglio

Website: www.joybaglio.com

Taymour Soomro is a Pakistani writer. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and The Southern Review. He is the author of Other Names for Love, a novel forthcoming in 2022 from FSG and Harvill Secker and is the coeditor, with Deepa Anappara, of the anthology Letters to a Writer of Colour.

Vu Tran is the author of the novel, Dragonfish. He has received a Whiting Award and an NEA Fellowship, and his work has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Mysteries, and Ploughshares. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago.


Twitter Username: roomwithavu

Website: vutranwriter.com

Alyssa Songsiridej is the author of Little Rabbit and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. She is also the managing editor at Electric Literature.


Twitter Username: anarasong

Website: www.alyssasongsiridej.com

Virtual

V119.

Unveiling the Juxtaposition of Muslim Characters in Modern Literature

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What makes or breaks a literary character who identifies as Muslim? How have Muslim characters evolved in different literary spaces? Does it matter when a faith-based character is written about by an author who identifies as a person of faith; or a person nonconforming to a defined spiritual path? Readers, writers, and publishers can now navigate through the stereotypes, tropes, and political undertones of Muslim identity issues within popular novels.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Afshan Malik is a Chicago native turned southern belle who authored the 2019 YA novel Pieces by Daybreak Press. She holds an MA in the nonprofit field and brings her interests together at Rabata, an organization promoting positive cultural change through education, spirituality, and community care.


Twitter Username: afshan1009

Tayyaba Syed is a multiple award-winning author, who has written over 20 children's books. As a journalist, her byline has been in numerous publications like NPR. She conducts literary and faith-based presentations as a teacher and fun storyteller, weaving great lessons and heart into everything.


Twitter Username: TayyabaWrites

Carla Taylor lives in California, where she homeschools her three children and teaches language arts and nature literacy. She has a particular interest in reading and reviewing nonfiction books addressing sociological themes, religion, and history. She is very passionate about early childhood literacy.

Virtual

V120.

We Are All Armenian Launch

(, , , , Scout Tufankjian)

Readings from We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora an anthology of creative nonfiction by diasporic Armenian writers to be published by University of Texas Press in March 2023.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Aram Mrjoian is a writer, editor, instructor, and PhD student at Florida State University. He is an editor at large at Chicago Review of Books, an interviews editor at the Southeast Review, and the assistant managing editor at TriQuarterly.


Twitter Username: amrjoian575

Raffi Joe Wartanian’s essays have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Miami Herald, the Baltimore Sun, Lapham's Quarterly, Outside magazine, and elsewhere. He teaches writing at UCLA, and has released two albums of original music: Pushkin Street and Critical Distance.


Twitter Username: RaffiJo

Hrag Vartanian, the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic, is an art critic, curator, artist, and lecturer on contemporary art with an expertise on the intersection of art and politics.

Nancy Kricorian is the author of the novels Zabelle, Dreams of Bread and Fire, and All the Light There Was. Her latest project is a novel about Armenians in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. She lives in New York.


Twitter Username: nancykric

Virtual

V121.

When Home Is Not Safe

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A reading by poets from the anthology When Home Is Not Safe, Writings on Verbal, Emotional and Physical Abuse (McFarland, 2021). The reading will run approximately forty-five minutes. A Q&A session will follow for the remaining fifteen minutes. This topic is of the utmost importance, as approximately one in four women and one in nine men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Judith Skillman is the author of more than twenty full-length collections. Pems have appeared in Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, Commonweal, and other journals. The recipient of awards from Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust, Skillman’s work can be seen at www.judithskillman.com.


Twitter Username: judithskillman

Website: www.judithskillman.com

Linera Lucas is the coeditor of When Home Is Not Safe: Writings on Domestic Verbal, Emotional, and Physical Abuse. She won the Crucible Fiction Prize and her short stories and poetry have been widely published and anthologized. Lucas has taught in Seattle at the UW Women's Center and Hugo House.

Lillo Way's publications include the poetry collection, Lend Me Your Wings, and Dubious Moon, which won the Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Contest. Her poems have won the E.E. Cummings Award and a Florida Review Editors’ Prize. She has received grants from the NEA and NY State Council on the Arts.

Carolyne Wright has 11 books, including Masquerade (Lost Horse Press, 2021); five books of poetry in translation from Spanish and Bengali; and the anthology Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace. She teaches at Seattle's Hugo House and holds a 2022 Fulbright grant to Bahia, Brazil.

Susan April is a writer who focuses on nature, environment, and stories of place and family. She has an MFA from Vermont College (Norwich University) and a master of science from the University of Chicago. She is a survivor of domestic violence and of early childhood trauma.

Virtual

V122.

"With Anger and Tenderness": A Reading by Mother Poets

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Mother-poets read from their work that touches on contradictory affects, including the maternal anger and tenderness that Adrienne Rich described. One poet addresses unspoken challenges and fears of motherhood along with what it means to be a parent with mental health issues. Another poet shares visual quilt poems with a nod to the history of women’s work. One of our poets explores issues of exile, immigration, and trauma as a mother and daughter. One poet confronts climate change as a mother.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

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Hannah Baker Saltmarsh is a poet, literary critic, and educator. A mother of three, she lives in Iowa with her family. An assistant professor of English at Mount Mercy University, Hannah has published a book of poems, Hysterical Water (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2021).


Twitter Username: HannahSaltmarsh

Meghan Vesper is a poet, mother, and occupational therapist who lives in Columbus, Ohio. She received her MFA from the University of Maryland and her MOT from The Ohio State University.

Isadora Grevan (originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a mother, poet, and an assistant professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Rutgers University, Newark. Her first book, O Fetiche como Estrutura, Imagem e Performance no Teatro de Nelson Rodrigues, was published in December 2021.

Sarah Antine is a poet and mother who lives in Potomac, Maryland. She works as the director of the DLGJC Arts Center and as a chaplain intern at MGUH in Washington, DC. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, TERcets podcast, The Journal, pms, Poetica, Torah: A Women's Commentary, and others.


Twitter Username: antinesarah

Website: https://sites.google.com/site/poetryandworkshops/home

Virtual

V123.

Writing Academic Misbehavior: Why the Campus Story Is Compelling and Terrifying

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With the public outcry surrounding #MeToo and other human rights crises, some writers have turned to the campus novel as compelling and productive terrain to examine the current zeitgeist. While riddled with complexities and creative challenges, the contemporary campus novel offers potential for transformation and renewal. Writers of campus novels will discuss their intentions behind writing their books, their experiences throughout the process, as well as the impact after publication.



This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.

Download event outline and supplemental documents.

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Maureen Medved is a writer of fiction, stage, and screen, a film reviewer and associate professor at the University of British Columbia. Her writing has been published and produced internationally. Her film adaptation of her novel won a prize at the 57th Berlinale. Black Star is her second novel.


Twitter Username: maureenmedved1

Julie Schumacher is the author of Dear Committee Members, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and nine other books—most recently, The Shakespeare Requirement. She is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Minnesota.

Carrie Jenkins is a professor of philosophy at UBC. Her books include What Love Is And What It Could Be (nonfiction), Uninvited: Talking Back to Plato (poetry, coauthored with Carla Nappi), Victoria Sees It (fiction), and Sad Love: Romance and the Search for Meaning (nonfiction).


Twitter Username: carriejenkins

Teddy Wayne is the author of The Great Man Theory (2022), Apartment, Loner, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, and Kapitoil. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and a regular contributor to the New York Times, The New Yorker, and McSweeney’s.


Twitter Username: teddywayne1999

Sarah Henstra is the author of The Red Word, a novel about 1990s campus life, feminist activism, and fraternity culture. She also writes fiction for young adults: Mad Miss Mimic and We Contain Multitudes. She is an associate professor of English at Ryerson University in Toronto.


Twitter Username: sarahhenstra

12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

AWP Bookfair, Exhibit Hall 1 & 2, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Exhibit Hall Level

W124.

AWP Bookfair Setup

The exhibit hall at the Seattle Convention Center will be open for bookfair setup. For safety and security reasons, only those holding a Bookfair Setup Access (BSA) registration, or those accompanied by an individual wearing a BSA registration, will be permitted inside the bookfair during setup hours. Bookfair exhibitors are welcome to pick up their registration materials in AWP’s registration area in Summit Lobby, Seattle Convention Center, Level 1.

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Registration, Summit Lobby, Seattle Convention Center, Level 1

W125.

Conference Registration, Sponsored by University of Washington

Attendees who have registered in advance, or who have yet to purchase a registration, may secure their registration materials in AWP’s registration area located in Summit Lobby, Seattle Convention Center, Level 1. Please consult the bookfair map in the AWP mobile app for location details. Students must present a valid student ID to check-in or register at our student rate. Seniors must present a valid ID to register at our senior rate. A $50 fee will be charged for all replacement badges.

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3:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Accessibility Services Desk, Registration Area, Summit Lobby, Seattle Convention Center, Level 1

W126.

Accessibility Tour

Join AWP conference staff for a tour of the Seattle Convention Center. This tour will cover main event areas of the Seattle Convention Center and will be an opportunity to ask questions about conference accessibility. This tour is great for someone who would like to get a sense for the distances between meeting rooms and to plan easiest routes. If you are unable to make it to this 3:00 p.m. tour, please email conference@awpwriter.org to arrange for a different time.

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5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Room 340-342, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3

W127.

CLMP Membership Meeting

This event is for all independent literary magazine and small press publishers: seasoned professionals, those just starting out, and all in between. Learn what we're planning for the year and share your thoughts on how we can best ensure that our community thrives. Even if you're not yet a member of CLMP, but would like to find out more, please feel welcome to join us.

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6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Metropolitan Ballroom A, Sheraton Grand Seattle, Third Floor, Union Street Tower

W128.

AWP Awards Celebration

Join AWP for an announcement of the winners of the George Garrett Award and the Small Press Publisher Award.

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2023_SEATTLE Annual Conference & Bookfair

March 8–11, 2023
Seattle, Washington

Seattle Convention Center

#AWP24 Virtual Events Guide
#AWP24 Kansas City Program
#AWP24 Print-at-Home Program