Carolina African American Writers Collective: After Over 20 Years, a Visioning of What’s to Come

In this session, representative writers offer insights as to the importance of the Collective in their work and how the organization's influence continues despite geographic distance. In addition, noted literary scholar, Dr. Lauri Ramey, who has written extensively about the Collective, joins the group to offer her insights. These are writers who challenge boundaries of form, language, and content. This session will explore the history of CAAWC, its resonance now, and its vision for the future.

The panelists, among seventy contemporary Serbian poets, appear in the anthology, Cat Painters, which was co-edited by Biljana D. Obradović (who is one of its major translators) and Dubravka Djurić, and prefaced by Charles Bernstein. These accomplished Serbian and Serbian-American poets will give a reading from the anthology and also from their recently published books translated into English.These west-oriented poets look to the future, and are not preoccupied with the past.

First published in 1982, Kaleidoscope is the country’s oldest literary journal dedicated to the work of writers with disabilities and disability-related writing and art. After a brief introduction about Kaleidoscope’s background, four readers who have been published in the journal will read from their work as well as selections from Larry Eigner, Vassar Miller, John Hockenberry and other pioneering writers whose work appeared in Kaleidoscope.

Before articles decrying limited opportunities for writers of color in publishing, there was Hurston/Wright, discovering, mentoring, and honoring African American writers. For more than a quarter of a century, Hurston/Wright has fostered a rigorous, nurturing space for writers at varying stages. This celebratory panel will include Hurston/Wright award winners, former workshop participants and faculty, and the current board chair, as they honor the legacy of this essential D.C. organization.

With a boot on each side of the civil-military divide, America's citizen-soldiers and their families are uniquely positioned to bridge the gaps between our armed forces, and the society they serve. Five civilian and military-veteran writers of poetry, memoir, and fiction read from their works, and discuss how they have specifically used poetry in published, practical ways to promote peace, respect, understanding, and empathy.

Not knowing when the dawn will come / I open every door -- Emily Dickinson

Since its founding in 1984, Coffee House Press has published poets whose work falls outside mainstream publishing's tastes, bringing poetry by authors of diverse backgrounds and styles into print. These works have gone on both to win awards and to contribute to larger cultural discourses. This reading, by long-term and newer Coffee House Press poets, explores the development of the CHP's poetry list over time, highlighting and showcasing its diversity of voices and styles.

Black storytelling is a trip down the rabbit hole of the American experience, a complex odyssey of myth and reality. The psychological landscape of African American literature is one of mental captivity, boundless genius, and reinventions of the self. How can the labyrinths of this inner world be brought to the page with authenticity and depth? Panelists examine the black mind in story as both sojourn through darkness and flight of the phoenix.

So your writing organization believes that race, gender, sexual orientation, and other dimensions of diversity are integral to artistic excellence. But what does that really mean? What vision and work does it entail? Since 2012, GrubStreet has been reckoning with its own shortcomings in this area, and working toward real and meaningful change. Come hear from board members, staff, and instructors about our ongoing structural efforts to ensure that our community is fully inclusive to all.

Contemporary writers in every nation explore eclectic forms. How can performance impact strategies and contexts for translation in our hemisphere? Along with altering words, translation complicates factors central to performance: the identity of the performer, communities/sites associated with meaning, ephemerality. Examples reference translation as script, use of digital technologies, musical and theatrical influences, translation in/as archive, the manifesto as a performative form, and more.

Historical fiction and nonfiction takes readers of young adult literature beyond the superficial consensus of textbooks. In doing so, these books delve into the messy truths of the past and puncture comfortable myths. How do authors portray past conflicts still being fought today such as sexual mores, post-Civil War race relations, and Cold War authoritarianism? How do books preserve rebellious individual memory in the face of conventional accounts that depict history that has become myth?

The playful, disruptive side of the imagination is embodied in the trickster figure and City University of New York MFA students and alumni take the trickster’s lead, intent on shaking things up. They also continue the university’s legacy of diversity, from class and national origin to cultural background to subject matter. MFA Program Graduates from Brooklyn, City, Hunter, and Queens Colleges display their craftiness--after all, the mischief is in the telling.

What does it take to execute a literary event that reflects diversity? What does it take to be truly inclusive as a festival organizer, literary event programmer, or publishing professional? Join the organizers of Canada's inaugural Festival of Literary Diversity in discussion with publishing professionals on how to promote and support a diverse lineup of authors. Discover how targeted initiatives and intentional approaches can effectively address the diversity gaps in the publishing industry.

How might creative writing instructors empower students and advocate social change while maintaining a focus on the artistic integrity of their literary craft? Panelists will discuss their experiences with gender-based violence survivors, prison inmates, study-abroad students, and underserved community groups to explore the challenges and strategies of working with writers who write not only for literary expression, but to create social change. A detailed reading list will also be provided.

Sometimes it is hard to criticize, one wants only to chronicle, wrote the mid-century poetry critic Randall Jarrell. What is the function of poetry reviewing today? This panel proposes to examine the culture and politics of poetry reviewing, addressing such matters as the responsibilities of the poetry reviewer, how poetry reviewing intersects with issues of race and gender, its role as community-builder, and the ways in which new media are transforming evaluative commentary on poetry.

Neurologist Dr. Michael Okun says, “People always talk about, ‘Are you going to step over the line or not step over the line?’ Everybody’s over the line.” In this panel poets speak from both sides of the medical experience, from a patient confronting breast cancer to a neurologist exploring her treatment of war veterans. Caregivers, patients, and loved ones are crossing the line, taking their stories back from the medical charts, using poetry to explore the meanings wrested from illness.

Three dynamic nonprofits using literature and publishing to elevate unheard voices and to share untold stories of marginalized communities describe the unique collaboration between their organizations' M.F.A. writers to bring about social change.Shout Mouse Press, PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools Program and Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop facilitate writing workshops, publish original works and provide author visits in DC's poorest and most crime stricken neighborhoods.

There’s an assumption that teaching theory courses or experimental writing mostly happens in universities. Not true: along the edges and outposts of academia, many of us are bringing Derrida to the rez, Bakhtin to the barrio, language poetry to developmental comp. This panel investigates not just so-called hard (or at least unfamiliar) texts taught in non-traditional settings, but also the stigma attached to the teachers whose careers are centered on serving marginalized students.

Transgender literature has become increasingly prominent in recent years. This panel addresses the publishing side of this cultural moment, which taken the form of both new trans literary publications and a growing visibility of trans literature in cis-centric journals and presses. Five trans editors and publishers discuss their experiences in curating trans literature and the challenges of making spaces for it where few had existed before.

The AWP Disability Caucus allows for those who are disabled or living with chronic illness, and their allies, to network and discuss common challenges related to identity, writing, and teaching while professionally leading a literary life. Building on our first meeting at the 2016 convention, we aim to archive our interests, challenges, and concerns in order to increase our visibility and emphasize our importance both to this organization and to the communities where we live, teach, and work.

AWP regularly welcomes members of other national associations to its conference. Such internationalism is important, but the nature of creative writing—as a general pursuit, an academic discipline and focus of research—varies from one context to another, sometimes at the expense of productive exchange. This panel of leading representatives from key organizations will consider some of the differences encountered, and suggest how an increasingly meaningful conversation might proceed.

In 2014, The New York Times asked if it’s a golden age for women essayists. Cheryl Strayed gave a qualified yes. But while a wave of women’s essays is shaping the literary scene, women are underrepresented in journals and the standard-bearer, Best American Essays. Our panel explores the literary fallout from this paradox, the shape-shifting nature of essays, why it’s tricky to identify as a woman writer, the effects on our work when asked to write as women, and the complications of invisibility.

The number of creative writing programs, and the numbers of students in those programs, are expanding significantly. But employment outcomes for creative writing graduates are poor: research shows that they either experience a working life characterized by precarity, low wages, and high volunteerism, or else must find employment in other areas. In this panel we discuss ways in which curriculum content can prepare students for a future that includes creative and professional success.

A woman must be ambitious in order to have a meaningful career in the arts. But ambition in women is often seen as un-feminine, egoistic, and aggressive rather than crucial to great work and identity. Until recently, no conversation has taken place to help women navigate this pervasive but unspoken double bind. On this panel, women across diverse backgrounds genres will provide both stories from the trenches and practical strategies for progressing in the arts, academia, and beyond.

Does the language we speak shape the way we think, our reality, our world, our dreams?

Do more words mean more thoughts? Can we think about things we don’t have words for? Working with Albanian, Chinese, French, Korean, Spanish, and Vietnamese, this panel’s poets, translators, and scholars discuss their roles as intermediaries, technicians, magicians, and alchemists working between languages to create inspired texts spanning cultural differences, geographic distances, and time.
Eastern Woodlands Natives Reading from When Spirits Visit and I Was Indian (Before Being Indian Was Cool). (Susan Deer Cloud, Monty Campbell, Jr., James Stevens, Denise Low)

Four Eastern Woodlands Indigenous writers read poetry and prose from MariJo Moore’s When Spirits Visit and Deer Cloud’s I Was Indian (Before Being Indian Was Cool) anthologies, evoking the 19th century ghost dance Native people once did to make a stand for their lives and defy vanishing forever. These 21st century word warriors read work that embodies how the ghost dance prevails in their poems and stories that shine on in affirmation of Mother Earth, the spirits and the ancient beauty ways.

“Nature writing" has sometimes had a storied history as a privileged pursuit, occasionally ignorant of social justice. “Eco-writing” is a new brand, one that acknowledges ecological and social embeddedness. This panel will feature a cross-genre reading of essays, poems, and stories interested in the entwinement of human with the more-than-human world. The featured work incorporates social justice and escapes, as much as possible, the baggage of privileged outdoor pursuits.

Trans artists/editors/publishers of color shepherd daily into the world innovative work that is highly crafted. Immersed in our present material conditions, decolonially reimagining our pasts and futures, temporally/geographically refiguring the wheres and whens of our storied bodies, responding to calls issued by our communities as we issue our own, this panel posits the possibilities of our presence, our generative genealogies, the care with which we consider our compositional/communal praxis.

A project of Welcome Table Press, Essaying the Body Electric is an online space showcasing nonfiction narratives and art that offer frank, arresting, meaningful portrayals and interpretations of the body. This reading features work that sings various electricities in fresh ways, essaying anew anorexia and memory, love and atrophy, motherhood and violence. After the reading, participants will address the fears, challenges, and triumphs of writing the body in the age of privacy gone public.

Writers with extensive experience teaching workshops reaching diverse and underserved populations, including seniors, teens, cancer survivors, and LGBT and multilingual individuals will discuss why they've chosen to do this work. Panelists will consider the rewards and challenges of teaching these workshops and their role in expanding the literary community.

It is increasingly difficult for those in privileged positions (politicians, the academy, the media) to ignore the violence in America’s public sphere. Often, the responses to these structures of power are confined to exposure (media coverage, statistics, etc.) or punishment of offending parties. This panel discusses how POC leverage their MFAs in non-traditional ways to foster healing in communities with trauma via new media/video games, community workshops, and other modes of cultural healing.

Harriet Arnow, Carson McCullers, Katherine Ann Porter, Lee Smith, Alice Walker, and Eudora Welty form a powerful coalition of influences for five Southern writers of later generations. We will discuss how the work of our literary foremothers helped us write our way into an understanding of the complex fabric woven from social, familial, and emotional relationships, and how the voices of the South’s different geographic regions—Deep, Middle, and Upper—continue to inform and shape our work.

This tribute is in celebration of the 80th year of the great feminist poet, activist, critic, teacher, Jewish theologian, and mystic Alicia Ostriker. Four writers spanning the country, generations, and ethnicities will discuss Ostriker’s multifaceted contributions to American letters since she came to prominence during the era of Second Wave Feminism. The tribute capped by a brief reading by Alicia Ostriker.

Fabulist writers and editors define Fabulism (often used with other terms like magical realism and slipstream), illuminate individual approaches to the genre alongside brief readings, and discuss how fabulism can be a rich territory for expression, exploration, and power for minorities, women, and the LGBT community. What does it mean to write about the other from other worlds or hybrid spaces?

For transnational writers who spend their lives constantly negotiating borders—geographic and personal—hybridity no longer becomes a choice. This panel features diverse writers whose experimental memoirs include non-linearity, multiple genres, photographs, and other multimedia. We will discuss how these hybrid strategies succeed or fail when trying to reconstruct family histories or address personal trauma, and how this can be especially challenging when moving between nations and identities.

Most organizations and university departments seek a more diverse faculty and staff, but the path to diversity goes far beyond placing a classified ad. Despite challenges in creating meaningful change, how can we build opportunities and systems that fuel those most often marginalized? Panelists will discuss how their organizations are investing in leadership development models that nurture a new generation of diverse leaders.

This panel will explore best practices of Creative Writing administrators and faculty committed to inclusive student engagement and recruitment.Panelists discuss curriculum to support diverse students in homogenous communities, as well as challenges in building intercultural competency and communication skills that transcend essentialist and myopic writing. Social Justice based integrative strategies to address student interests for teaching within and writing for non-traditional communities.

Since 2004, From the Fishouse has provided the public greater access to the poems & voices of emerging US poets by using online audio archives, simulcast readings, & other media to bring poetry into the home & classroom. Our revised website now features emerging international poets & translators. This bilingual reading will showcase poets writing in Russian, Polish, Spanish, Albanian & Filipino, as well as a translator discussion about process & the joys & challenges of this important work.

Writers who straddle multiple identities (Arab American, Ecuadorian/White, Indian/Irish, Mexican/White, Transnational Korean Adoptee) examine how race and culture translate into their work and writing communities. How do mixed identities compete and cooperate: for airtime, authority, and claims to authenticity? In what ways might mixed writers pass or pander? How might editors and publishers include mixed voices without either exoticizing or erasing minoritized positions?