This guest post is from my fellow Stonecoast Alum, Judith Podell, who writes about the magnitude and madness of the AWP Conference in Chicago, especially for reclusive writers, and why she will attend next year’s conference.
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Just got back from the AWP Conference and Book Fair with an extra suitcase full of small press books, magazines (including the 5 pound 30th anniversary issue of the Mississippi Review) and the desire to retreat to my Fortress of Solitude. Never again, I tell myself.
There were 10,000 writers/teachers, small press publishers/writers, editor/writers and just plain writers at this years AWP Conference, aka Burning Man for MFAs.
There were 400 panels over a period of 3 days. And that’s not counting the off-site events.
There were over 500 exhibits in the Book Fair, including virtually every small press and literary magazine in America.
Writers tend to be introverts. The AWP is a giant schmooze fest and we were all leading with our worst side. By late Thursday afternoon I was collapsed in a mournful heap on the Hilton lobby stairs, which had turned into Dante’s inferno’s foyer. It suddenly seemed like there were more writers and books and small book publishers in the world than there were bona fide readers. This may in fact be the truth, but the sign of a first rate intelligence, as F. Scott said, is to be able to hold two contradictory ideas in ones mind and still function.
I can’t go on, I can’t go on, I must go on, I said, now channeling Beckett. Ahead of me were reunions with friends I only get to visit with on Facebook, and memorable panels, like Ellie Meeropol’s on “Balancing Craft and Commitment in Political Fiction,” which I almost didn’t go to because it was 4:30 on Saturday, almost time for another meltdown.
Why do we do this? Because reading and writing are our truest loves, and even if there are not nearly enough of us to be a respectable market share, literature is our life. And it is good to be surrounded by one’s true tribe. Yeah, same time next year. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.
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Judith Podell holds an MFA from USM-Stonecoast and lives in Washington, DC. She reviews books for Publisher’s Weekly and Celebrities in Disgrace, and is a minor authority on the Blues. Her website is www.memphisearlene.com. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress, The Last of the Khazars, was in the first issue of The New Guard Review of Literature.