AWP Day 2 (Bookfair busyness)

Sitting at the UCA table in the AWP bookfair you can certainly feel the record size of the conference. The browsers came in waves yesterday, especially after 11:00 or so. Today the room(s) should be even more jammed, given that conference allows the general public to access the bookfair on the last day. Many people who came by our table were taken by the name of our journal, Toad Suck Review, and about hundred times over we had to explain that Toad Suck is not just a quirky title but a real place name in Central Arkansas, not far from where the journal is produced. And of course we recounted the story behind the place name. Centuries ago, ferry boat captains used to dock at that spot on the Arkansas river, head into the local bars, and then drink so much that "swelled up like toads," or in other words, they became "toad suck drunk." The story, apparently a true one, always gets a laugh and a smile, if not a sale. But sales aren't the only point of being here; national exposure is actually more important, especially now that the journal is affiliated with a brand new MFA program, a program that has not even assembled its first class of students. We're actually hoping that being here at AWP leads to more applicants for that first class.

While I did not attend any sessions yesterday, I did browse the other tables at the bookfair, just as I did on Thursday, and uncovered some sweet finds. One small press called Scout Books publishes pocket sized, hand illustrated versions of classic short stories like "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "To Build a Fire." I was excited to find them, since a former student of mine, Gus Carlson, is a superb illustrator and enjoys drawing pictures to accompany the stories he writes. He seems an ideal candidate to illustrate one of their later books. I told them this, and they seemed interested. (Now I have to tell Gus.) Some interesting finds also came to our table. One fellow was passing around postcards for a web site called Instafiction, which posts one link each day to a short story posted on line. It can be any kind of story anywhere on the net. Sounds like a fun idea, and possibly a way of giving my fiction writing students an eccentric, ever changing textbook. (I'm sure they'd appreciate the free price tag.) Later, a young, kind-looking middle eastern fellow came around asking if I knew of any international students who were good writers. Yes, in fact, I do, I said. Apparently, Notre Dame University is assembling a collection of stories written in English by foreign students, and after publishing this collection--I'm not even sure what that means exactly--they will host a reading on their campus. I mentioned that the student I had in mind was Russian. He seemed a little befuddled by this. He said that if he selected my Russian student's story he also have to find a Russian poet and songwriter and theatrical performer(s). It wasn't clear to me why one good short story wasn't enough for his venture, but the guy walked off before I could get a full explanation. Our neighbors in the bookfair room are from a New York journal called First Inkling. They are noteworthy on several counts. First, the journal only publishes student writing, be that graduate or undergraduate. Second, they actually pay money to their contributors. Third, they've got a great attitude. Students do a considerable amount of work for the journal. I mean real, experientially valuable work. They edit the content; they interview writers for profiles that the journal publishes; they write grants; they organize literary events. That's a magazine that respects the intelligence of its students--freshmen and sophomores in college, no less--and in return gets great work from them. If you're a student, sent First Inkling some fiction, nonfiction, or poetry to look at. If you're a teacher, spread the word.

After the bookfair ended, the second big business of the day started: a reception honoring our new MFA program and the release of Toad Suck Review #2. The event got off to a rough start when we arrived a half-hour ahead of time to find that the hotel staff had set up only three card tables, a modest serving of chips and dip, and a water cooler. We'd been telling everyone about this reception--and we'd been promising "food and drink." Apparently, the Hilton Chicago staff was merely following instructions given on the work order. So we flew into action, begging them for several more tables and chairs and for a cash bar. At first it appeared that no bartender would be available, but a manager appeared moments later to say that, yes, they did indeed have someone. Whew. A bar was wheeled a bit later, just in time for the start of the event. It all went off well, although my wife and I felt obliged to buy one round of drinks for the (21 or older) students to whom we'd promised food and drink. (Many thanks, by the way, to the Hilton Chicago staff for being so helpful and so patient with us. They were truly superb and truly professional.) A representative from AWP came around to the recepton, kindly welcoming our program to the organization; several friends of TSR wandered in, and finally, around 7:30 we began a short reading featuring five contributors to the journal. They all read exceptionally well and showed off the quality of issue #2. Afterwards, we invited some current and former students up to our suite where we caught up and shared UCA stories. It was a late, but wonderful evening.

Now it's off to day #3. One session looks promising, and will get me out of the bookfair for an hour or so: a session on the long poem. Since this semester I'm teaching a course on this form, I figure I better go and hear what is said about it.

AWP Day 1 (10,000 stories)

Here I am at the biggest AWP ever, a scary thought given what a monster the conference always is. This year we've completely taken over not one but two landmark hotels in downtown Chicago, to say nothing of all the conference goers who are staying in other hotels throughout the city or with friends--and that's a considerable number, at least based on one idiosyncratic sample: the people I've talked to. You know AWP is in town when poetry is being broadcast in the elevators, when wine is flowing like tap water, when not businessmen but creative writing teachers occupy the fancy end-of-hallway suites at the Hilton Chicago (yes, we actually got one, by some strange turns of events), when almost everyone you pass in the street looks between 25 and 35 years old and is carrying the signature white canvas bag with red straps as well as a look of quiet, elevated intensity. True story. I was walking down the sidewalk to a breakfast place yesterday morning and happened to pass two women. One woman clearly had the other pinned, talking in a loud, aggressive voice only inches from her face, her hands cutting arcs through the air for emphasis. I came closer, close enough to hear. What was the first woman yelling about? City corruption? The price of gas? The job situation? Hardly. She was describing an exercise she uses in her poetry writing class! How many times do you hear that walking down a city street at 8:00 in the morning?

Welcome to my updates from AWP 2012. It's a different conference for me this year. Normally, my university extends some (rather limited) travel funds with the idea that I go to sessions that will inform my teaching. And I do. Some years my head is so full of session talk there's barely room for a stray thought. This year, however, I received funds to present in a session and to man UCA's bookfair table. We're promoting both our new MFA program, the Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop, and Toad Suck Review, our national literary magazine. This is just to say that I won't be wandering the session hallways as much this year and any report I offer from AWP can't pretend to be comprehensive, just one conference goer's conference story. One of 10,000 such stories being written this weekend.

Yesterday I went to two sessions. My own session, about the value of undergraduate creative writing exchanges, was put in an unncessarily large room, but the crowd was respectable and very interested in the subject. A few of them came up to us afterward and said how thoroughly they enjoyed the session, which was very gratifying. I know how thoroughly unenjoyable some AWP sessions can be, and so as we were talking I kept wondering how we and what we were saying was being received. The other session I attended was about novel writing workshops in MFA programs: how many are actually taught, how they are taught, how they might be better taught. It was a very crowded session with a passionately interested audience. Clearly the subject mattered greatly to them: graduate students who would love to write novels for their MFA theses but currently get very little support for doing so from their workshop classes. Run by Cathy Day, that invaluable agitator for allowing longer forms in workshop classes, it was a fasicnating session, both pragmatic and inspiring. It's fascinating to see the extent to which the idea of a novel writing class has caught on recently. I remember attending a session on the novel writing workshop at the 2005 AWP in Vancouver. The session was run by a British writing program, the one at Bath Spa University, and it seemed like such a novelty. I know most of the American audience members for the session were completely befuddled by the idea. Now, seven years later, novel writing workshops are popping up everywhere, and taught in drastically different ways, and not always in beneficial ways. (I heard some really bizarre anecdotes in the session yesterday.) It's a fertile, exciting time for the Novel Writing Workshop. There's no one fixed pedagogy and there's an awful lot of experimenting going on, mostly by committed, inventive teachers who simply want to give their students a chance to work on novel inside the program curriculum not outside it, as if almost always the case.

The rest of the day I hung out in the bookfair. I saw many of the magazines and programs profiled that I always see profiled at AWP, along with some quirky new ones. I bought the new book of poems by Megan Kaminski, a writer who teaches at the University of Kansas and who introduced UCA to the idea of the undergraduate creative writing exchange. Her book is called Desiring Map (Coconut Books). I also happened upon an enthusiastic indie press called Write Bloody. Among the books they were selling was a volume of zombie poetry. I had to

laugh--and I had to buy it. I know so many people--students, former students, colleagues--who truly get a kick out of all things zombie. Not sure what that says about our times. The book, by the way, features some very serious poems. It was a fun time chatting with folks who came by our table and visiting with folks at other tables. We sold some TSRs and talked up our new MFA. I also ran into several old friends and colleagues, which always happens at AWP, but I will have to talk about that phenomenon in another post, as this one has already gone on too long.