Thinking about AWP Afterward…
Ahhh AWP. How I remembered you and how much you’ve grown. There’s even room for a bratty troublemaker like me amidst your folds of earnestness and literary importance.
I kid. In 2006, a week after the demise of my 5-year relationship, I attended The Associated Writing Programs’s annual conference because it was in Austin, abutted SXSW and I needed to get the hell out of town. Since I was bitter and angry, I spent the better part of 3 days being bitter and angry to complete strangers who were really just there to let me know about their lovingly edited literary journal with a sassy title like Jumping Coffee Table or something.
I shouldn’t have gone. I should have done what normal people do with a broken heart which is drink too much and kick drywall. Instead, I’m 1500 miles from home, without purpose or anchor and castigating some poor soul from Pine Manor College for not having a URL on the front of their student publication or for giving it some less-than-sassy-moniker like Lower Hills Review.
Amid that bile, I came away with exactly one useful observation: The paper literary journal is on a shrinking island of relevance but its contents are as important as ever. How it will matter to future generations will depend almost entirely on how it takes advantage of new systems of delivery.
Or put simpler, when was the last time your saw a literary journal with an RSS feed? Aren’t we due for one?
I’ve grown and so has AWP. I went this year, happy and purposeful, as a representative of BookTour who had a table at the conference Book Fair. Our goal: To get colleges to add their literary events and visiting writers series to our database. And since it was also the celebration of my one-year anniversary with my girlfriend, I had something wonderful to come home to after a long day of conferencing.
I also noticed this year that the academic writing community was beginning to acknowledge, with considerable maturity, that seismic changes are afoot in the world of literature. Panels like "It’s Not Hopeless: The Future of Independent Publishing" seemed realistic instead of in denial. More and more journals are seeing the web as crucial to their growth. And when I told departments that we were building the "world’s largest database of author events, online and 100% free" they seemed excited instead of bemused.
I also ran into some old friends (Carolyn Kellogg, who remains effortlessly fabulous and David Kipen, without whom such things don’t seem right, and Aviya Kushner, whom I simply don’t see enough of), neighbors from back home (I boarded an outbound flight with have the Stanford Stegner teaching faculty) and made the acquaintance of a journal about meat. Plus about 65 other small publications doing excellent work, with top-flight contributors. Got me energized about writing more.
A solid productive trip, with a lovely anniversary thrown in. You just may see me in Chicago this time next year, eager to pick up the latest issue of Jumping Coffee Table