FACULTY AND ALUMS (VIRTUALLY) @AWP 2021
10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. CST
W105. An FC2 Reading.
Marream Krollos, Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, Grant Maierhofer, Susan Neville, Darcie Dennigan
FC2 has been a leading publisher of experimental writing for over 40 years, hosting a dynamic and diverse conversation about what constitutes the innovative. Their authors include, among many others, Samuel Delany, Leslie Scalapino, Lidia Yuknavitch, Stephen Graham Jones, Diane Williams, Marc Anthony Richardson, Amelia Gray, and Vi Khi Nao. This event features readings by authors of their latest releases, followed by a Q&A.
W110. What’s Poetry Got to Do with It?: Creative Writing in the Wider World.
Samantha Fain, Chloe Martinez (poetry, 2009), Helena Mesa, Annie Finch
Poetry is a practice of introspection and transformation. How can poetry help us to be more introspective and transformative in our nonpoetic lives? Four panelists discuss the uses and effects of poetic engagement in four different contexts: a psychology study, a prison justice organization, a religious studies classroom, and a printmaking workshop. Panelists will share techniques for bringing poetry into nonpoetic settings in productive ways.
11:10 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. CST
W114. How Do We Get Free?
Somayeh Shams (fiction, 2014), Carrie M. Mar (poetry, 2013), Adrienne G. Perry (fiction, 2013), Francine Conley (poetry, 2014)
Inspired by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s How We Get Free, Rabble Collective will look at how writers get free through their writing. We will discuss authors—with a focus on women and women of color—who have written about liberation, how to protect our imaginations in challenging times, and the complex difficulties women artists encounter in their search for freedom. Feeling the agency of the moment, our panelists, poets, and prosers will share instruments they apply in their quest for freedom.
12:20 p.m. to 1:20 p.m. CST
W121. Betrayed: Writing about Family, Friends, and Loved Ones.
Lisa Van Orman Hadley (fiction, 2009), Helen Fremont (fiction, 1991), Annie Kim (poetry, 2009), Lynette D’Amico (fiction, 2013)Lenore Myka (fiction, 2009)
As poets and prose writers, our creative process is complicated by our anticipation of our loved ones’ reactions to our work. We risk harming real-life relationships, and may expose ourselves and others to legal liability. How do we address these conflicts in our writing and in our lives, and what choices can we make to protect ourselves, our work, and our loved ones? We’ll discuss strategies to mitigate the potential for liability and emotional harm before and after publication.
W122. Free Verse: Making a Life outside the Tenure Stream.
Paul Guest, Ada Limón, Victoria Chang (poetry, 2005), Maggie Smith, Jennifer Popa
In this panel, four award-winning writers will discuss how they built their careers outside the tenure stream: in investment banking, freelance journalism, and as adjunct and visiting faculty. They will share how they have negotiated the life of the mind with the demands of the real world outside of academia. They will discuss how the work they’ve done off the page has enriched and supported their writing as well as the pragmatics of living without the harsh mistress of tenure.
W128. The Topical Poem.
Rae Armantrout, Stephanie Elliott Prieto, Paolo Javier, Lyn Hejinian, Monica Youn
The last year has been filled with disturbing events, including a pandemic disrupting our society and separating us during an election year and in a time of evident police violence and racial injustice. This panel will deal with the ways poets can deal with current events. How do poets write good topical poetry? Does topical poetry run the risk of being ephemeral or short on craft? Is a non-topical poem irrelevant? Panelists will discuss the ways they have dealt with these questions.
3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. CST
W133. Invincibles: Women Writers Publishing After 50.
Naomi J. Williams, Val Brelinski, Peg Alford Pursell (fiction, 1996), Jimin Han, Geeta Kothari
Many panels and articles claim to honor older women writers—then define “older” as over 35! The fiction writers on this panel all published their first books after age 50. What are the particular challenges—and opportunities—posed by our age and gender? How do we simultaneously manage the demands of writing, publishing—and menopause? In what ways are we constrained—or free? We share true stories, tips, and encouragement for writers of all ages.
W136. The Futures of Documentary and Investigative Poetries.
Solmaz Sharif, Erika Meitner, Tyehimba Jess, Philip Metres, Layli Long Soldier
Investigative or documentary poetry situates itself at the nexus between literary production and journalism, where the mythic and factual, the visionary and political, and past and future all meet. From doing recovery projects to performing rituals of healing to inventing forms, panelists will share work (their own and others’) and discuss challenges in docupoetic writing and its futures: the ethics of positionality, appropriation, fictionalizing, collaboration, and political engagement.
4:10 p.m. to 5:10 p.m. CST
W144. Women Poets Sharing Their Success Stories and Immigrant Experiences through Poetry.
Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, Shadab Zeest Hashmi (poetry, 2009), Deema Shehabi, Pramila Venkateswaran
This event will share the creative journey and poetry of four immigrant female poets, who have paved their way to success, despite their challenges and setbacks. Their journey is inspiring, and their stories must be told to inspire others. Much has been said about how immigration affects a writer’s creative pursuit, and about the challenges of immigrant writers. But here, we explore the other side of this phenomenon, that enables the writers beyond borders to draw their roadmap to success.
W145. If Not Now: Jewish Poets and Racial Justice.
Alan Shapiro, Dan Alter, Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Chanda Feldman, Daniel Khalastchi
How does the struggle for racial justice affect the practice of Jewish poets? In what ways does a Jewish heritage inform writing and literary citizenship? In the larger reckoning around racism, Jewish poets grapple with intersections of Jewish, White, Arab and Black identities. Jewish positions of access, for some, to white privilege, while being target of white supremacy, are complex. But poetic craft can contain difficult honesties. Panelists will read and engage with this critical issue.
5:20 p.m. to 6:20 p.m. CST
W160. Home in the Diaspora, Poetics of.
Owen Lewis, Nathan McClain (poetry, 2013), Aaron Coleman, Eamonn Wall, Wendy French
Home in America often means home in a diaspora in which two lives are lived simultaneously. The homeland of origin exerts emotional, cultural, spiritual, and imaginative influences both on the individual and collective consciousness. Fives poets of African-, English/Spanish Caribbean-, Irish-, Jewish-, and Haitian-American backgrounds will explore how diaspora and homeland are represented in the poetries of their cultures and own works, highlighting themes as well as craft and poetics.
10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. CST
T103. Compounding the Line: Visual Poetics in a Word Doc World.
Diana Nguyen, Octavio Quintanilla, Jennifer Steinorth (poetry, 2015), Douglas Kearney
As we work to deconstruct colonial, patriarchal and ableist strongholds, can sidestepping conventions of modern typography to explore language through other modalities help to free us? Can graphic, experimental, unmastered play be leveraged to penetrate linguistic silence? As readers, how should we engage interdisciplinary texts? As writers, teachers and editors, how should we evaluate them? And when such work is ready for the world, how will it travel? Where will it live? Five multi-modal poets discuss.
T104. Fierce Lineage, Poetic Agency: Women of Copper Canyon Press.
Leila Chatti, Ellen Bass, Traci Brimhall, Victoria Chang (poetry, 2005), Nikki Wallschlaeger
Reading from their own new and recent poetry collections while paying homage to a powerful lineage of female-identified poets, a diverse lineup of Copper Canyon Press authors will share poems of survival and love, desire and illness, of bodies that move with agency and voices that speak with complexity. Each reader will present, in addition to her own work, one poem by an influential woman author from Copper Canyon’s 45+ year catalog.
11:10 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. CST
T117. Poetics across the Disciplines.
David Welch, Sumita Chakraborty, Emily Jungmin Yoon, Nomi Stone (poetry, 2017), Keith S. Wilson
How do voltas bring verve to video games? What’s the connection between enjambments and anthropology? How, across the disciplines, does prosody help us through? Join five poets for a roundtable discussion about how they blend poetry into the classroom with a variety of disciplines beyond creative writing, including game development, anthropology, and gender studies. As the panelists are practicing writers, each will also discuss how interdisciplinary experiences have enriched their poems.
12:20 p.m. to 1:20 p.m. CST
T125. (R)Evolution: Cuban American Novelists on Writing Political Upheaval.
Alejandro Nodarse, Achy Obejas (fiction, 1993), Chantel Acevedo
This panel gathers five Cuban American novelists whose work responds to—and is forged by— various forms of political upheaval. When faced with the challenge of confronting political moments fraught with anti-immigrant sentiment, homophobia, and violent nationalism, we can look to the work of Cuban American writers for examples of how writing can function as a tool of resistance. Panelists will discuss the ways in which their work serves as a form of protest, social dissent, and bearing witness.
1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. CST
T131. A Reading & Conversation with Shira Erlichman, Sumita Chakraborty, and Taylor Johnson, Moderated by Cortney Lamar Charleston, Sponsored by Alice James Books.
(Shira Erlichman, Sumita Chakraborty, Taylor Johnson (poetry, current), Cortney Lamar Charleston
AJB presents three exciting writers of excellence to share their most recent work: Chakraborty’s Arrow is “full of life and joy even when she is thinking through violence and grief.” In Odes to Lithium, Erlichman pens a love letter to lithium, her medication for Bipolar Disorder. In Inheritance, Johnson writes poems about everyday moments in Washington D.C. and the self’s struggle with definition and assumption. Introduced and moderated by poet, editor, and critic Cortney Lamar Charleston.
4:10 p.m. to 5:10 p.m. CST
T135. A Tribute to Alan Shapiro.
Jonathan Farmer, Angel Nafis (poetry, 2019), Michael Collier, David Tomas Martinez
With ethical rigor and unmistakable joy, in poems, essays, memoirs, translations, and fiction, Alan Shapiro has created an enduring chronicle of public and private grief and a vibrant example of the mind’s ability to go on making, seeing, and singing through our human and historical contingency. Twenty-five years after he began teaching at the University of North Carolina, students, colleagues, editors, and friends come together to celebrate a major poet and a mentor to some of the most exciting voices in poetry today.
T138. Frustrated Pastorals: Burning Fields, Ruined Gardens, Desert Shores.
Joseph Campana, Katie Peterson, Jennifer Foerster, Cecily Parks, Sandra Lim
Once pastoral was code for nostalgia, escapism, idealization. Poets of late invoke pastoral as ecological engagement, as making palpable elusive realities in a virtual, counterfactual world. This panel returns not to fantasies of green space but to the tedium of the desert, frustration of difficult weather, alienation of ravaged shores, discomfort of exposure. Pastoral’s ancient contradictions may not idealize but rather realize the world, and our place in it, in an era of precarious climate
10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. CST
F103. Beyond How-To: The Art of the Craft Essay.
K. L. Cook, Margot Livesey, Sven Birkerts, Christopher Castellani
Five award-winning writers, editors, and professors in MFA programs—who have published books on the craft of fiction and nonfiction—will discuss the rich tradition of the craft essay and their approaches, as practitioners, to investigating and artfully writing about issues of aesthetics, technique, process, close reading, and literary and nonliterary influence.
4:10 p.m. to 5:10 p.m. CST
F136. High Style and Misdemeanors: The Virtues and Vices of Elevated Prose.
Lauren Alwan (fiction, 2008), Anita Felicelli, Olga Zilberbourg, Lillian Howan, Aatif Rashid
The hallmarks of high style—elevated voice, obsession with the pictorial, self-consciousness, and poetic devices—are rooted in Flaubert and European realism. Can writers whose work concerns immigration and displacement embrace a stylistic approach that has historically been disengaged and apolitical? Authors of fiction that centers on immigration, intergenerational stories, and belonging, read their work and discuss the intersection of elevated prose and socially and politically engaged work
12:20 p.m. to 1:20 p.m. CST
S126. Special Problems in Vocabulary: A Tribute to Tony Hoagland.
Kay Cosgrove, Adrian Blevins (poetry, 2002), Hayan Charara, Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry, 2010), Kevin Prufer
Tony Hoagland was a poet, critic, teacher, and “champion of poetry.” His ten books include the poetry collections What Narcissism Means to Meand Sweet Ruin, and craft book The Art of the Voice. He taught at the University of Houston and Warren Wilson MFA program and led free workshops across the country. His poetry and criticism, which scrutinize contemporary culture with humor and empathy, appealed to a wide readership. This panel invites writers and former students to celebrate his legacy.
11:10 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. CST
Sn102. In Limbo: The Dilemma of Digital Thesis Repositories.
Lan Samantha Chang, Alan Soldofsky, Lilly Dayton, Douglas Unger, Lorinda Toledo
As universities across the nation have transitioned to electronic theses, many graduate students face a dilemma: to earn a degree they are required to submit their work to a digital thesis repository. And though several top programs offer exemptions, not all programs protect students from having to submit their creative work to open-access repositories. What solutions exist for programs to protect creative theses from future publication roadblocks or potential piracy? We’ll describe a few.
12:20 p.m. to 1:20 p.m. CST
Sn110. Bending the Arc Toward Justice: Poetry on the Law.
Kathleen McClung, Rebecca Foust (poetry, 2010), George Higgins (poetry, 2002), Laura Schulkind, Lynne Thompson
Activism rises up both outside and inside courthouses, territory ripe for poetry. Four practicing or “recovering” attorneys and a jury forewoman read poems on the legal system and the people who strive for justice within and beyond the courtroom. African American and white panelists present vivid poetic testimony that contemplates and critiques an imperfect justice system and envisions possibilities for change. Join us for an impassioned reading and Q&A as we deepen the conversation on law.
Sn115. Out of Their “Quarrel”: Poets Argue with Their History.
Cynthia Hogue, Andrea Carter Brown, Scott Hightower, Andy Young (poetry, 2011)
“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.” After Yeats, five poets from diverse backgrounds reflect on their geographic, cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic, and culinary history. For some, it provides a generous metaphor one can draw on with confidence; for others, it is a revelation of complicity, a source of reckoning, an occasion for rebellion. For all, it is the place where questions and quests are shaped, justice savored or delayed.
Sn117. The Emotional Currency of International Writing Programs: Sozopol Seminar’s Case.
Ben Bush, Eireene Nealand, Christopher Castellani, Milena Deleva, Steven Wingate
Each year, both distinguished and aspiring authors from the US gather with Bulgarian writers on the Black Sea Coast for the Sozopol Fiction Seminars of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. The Seminars have been life-changing for many, and their cultural exchange spurs spillovers such as translation activism and a rise in Anglophone novels set in the Balkans. Sozopol alumni read from work set in the region and discuss how interaction with another culture impacts American and global identities.
3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. CST
Sn123. Iowa Short Fiction Award Series 50th Anniversary Reading.
Ashley Wurzbacher, Anthony Varallo, Allegra Hyde, Ruvanee Vilhauer, Emily WortmanWunder
Since its creation in 1969, the Iowa Short Fiction Award series, juried through the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, has awarded the publication of the first fiction books of over 65 writers. This reading will bring together current and past winners of the Iowa Short Fiction Award and John Simmons #AWP21 Conference & Bookfair Schedule of Events 46 Short Fiction Award in celebration of the series’ 50th anniversary and the University of Iowa Press’s ongoing commitment to elevating the voices of emerging fiction writers.
4:10 p.m. to 5:10 p.m. CST
Sn133. Science at the Source: Poetic Methods.
Rosalie Moffett, Nomi Stone (poetry, 2017), John James, Rushi Vyas, Kathryn Nuernberger
Is poetry science? What happens when poets engage research and adopt strategies of scientific inquiry? Five poets will discuss the influence of science on their craft (observation, form, and discovery), and also as a method of investigating truth. We will demonstrate how studying the intricacies of our natural world offers new insight on the image-less territories of the interior and how poetry can make our complex, shared reality penetrable and knowable in ways science by itself cannot.
Sn136. Time Passes: When Life Is Long and Art Is Short(er).
Derek Palacio, Caitlin Horrocks, Kathleen Rooney, Joseph Scapellato
Fiction writers are often advised to tackle tales taking place over modest, supposedly manageable amounts of time: days, weeks, months. These panelists all instead wrote stories and books that unspool over years, decades, generations. How do writers keep such a story aloft, sustaining narrative tension and selecting which moments to depict? How do we maintain readers’ belief in and empathy for characters who keep changing, shaped by a lifetime’s worth of half-seen experiences?
