AWP’d

This past weekend I attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Seattle. So did about thirteen thousand other writers, publishers, and educators. To say it was overwhelming would be a tiny understatement. Given the plethora of things to do and books to buy, it’s a wonder that I didn’t come back to Vancouver with more books and litmags than I actually did.

There were many highlights of the weekend for me. One was catching up with the fantastic Jess Wells. I also was able to reconnect with Murray Farish, a fiction professor at Webster University whose workshop I took while I was on staff there. He was a fantastic teacher, and now he’s also got a new short story collection out, titled Inappropriate Behavior. I picked up a copy and am looking forward to reading it.

I was pleased to see how broadly AWP considered representation in the mix of panels and readings that were included in the conference program. One in particular that I found enlightening was titled “Queer Double Agents: Writing & Publishing Between Communities.” I wrote a little bit about this that you can find on PRISM international‘s website, along with my colleagues’ comments on the highlights of the weekend for them. Check it out!