UMD English at AWP 2023

UMD English faculty, students and alumni represented at AWP in Seattle from March 9–11, 2023

March 9, 2023

9:00 am to 10:15 am
Poetic Experiments: Incorporating Play into Writing & Teaching 
Room 337, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
Kimberly Grey, Felicia Zamora, Phillip B. Williams, Julie Carr, Jehanne Dubrow (MFA, 2003)

These innovative poets from various backgrounds and aesthetic schools will discuss the role that play takes in their creative work and pedagogy, focusing on approach and process and the various ways that linguistic, sonic, and visual play are part of their poetic and teaching lives. How can play make writing pleasurable? How can it provoke discovery for students? Some of the various roles of play that will be discussed are play as innovation, play as protest, and play as improvisation.

Writing about Culture & Place: Techniques for Vibrant & Ethical Worldbuilding
Rooms 347-348, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
Hannah Bae, Krys Lee, Jung Yun, Michael David Lukas (MFA, 2006), Chet'la Sebree

This multigenre panel of writers, who have set their work across three continents, will discuss techniques for writing about culture and place, with an emphasis on bringing worlds to life on the page in imaginative and ethical ways. Among some of the questions that we will address: how can we authentically set our work in a culture, particularly if it isn’t our own? And what liberties can we take when representing real places and people, or creating entirely fictional cultures and landscapes?

10:35 am to 11:50 am
Mapping the Future of the Literary Arts Field, Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts 
Signature Room, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 5
Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis (BA, 2001; PhD, 2014) Amy Stolls, Fred Sasaki

The Smithsonian, in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, has embarked on a year-long project to examine the literary arts field, generate new ideas, encourage cross-sector communication, and offer approaches and solutions to nurture a more just and financially viable ecosystem. Panelists will provide an overview of this effort and its origins, and invite project advisors and participants into the conversation.

12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Totalitarian Traumas: A Reading by Writers from the Former USSR 
Room 430, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
Sasha Vasilyuk, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, Anna Halberstadt, Anna Fridlis, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach (BA, 2008)

Five writers from Ukraine, Russia, the Baltics, and other former Soviet republics stage a response to the war in Ukraine and the traumas of the totalitarian upbringing it has reawakened. In reading from our fiction, poetry, memoir, and journalism work, we present a deeper view of the region and offer textural solutions to making the political personal.

Contemporary Chantuelles: A Reading by Caribbean Poets 
Room 437, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
Lauren K. Alleyne, Shara McCallum (MFA, 1996), Vladimir Lucien, Safiya Sinclair, Malika Booker

Acclaimed poets from the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, St. Lucia, and Grenada, will share their award-winning work, and discuss how their Caribbean roots inform their poetics, pedagogies, and practices.

1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
Minding the Gaps and Mining Landscape in Linked Short Story Collections 
Rooms 343-344, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
Ramona Reeves, Leslie Pietrzyk, Camille Acker, Rion Amilcar Scott, Toni Ann Johnson

Linked short story collections have become more popular, perhaps in part because of their hybrid nature. They can employ recurring themes, characters, and settings to situate readers in worlds that move beyond the borders of many short stories while stopping short of the breadth and propulsion of a novel. Minding the gaps, or the spaces, is key in writing linked story collections. How does space function between and within linked collections, and what stories does one choose to tell and why?

3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
Foreseeable Futures: Equitable Access to Professional Trajectories for Students 
Rooms 340-342, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
David Krausman, Anna Leahy (MFA, 1993), Terry Ann Thaxton, Ashley Mack-Jackson, David Groff

As we guide students in their writing craft, how do our programs guide decisions and opportunities for students’ individual professional trajectories over a lifetime? With equitable access in mind, panelists offer rationales, approaches, and best practices for courses and programming in publishing, jobs and careers, literary citizenship, and/or sustaining a writing life. As part of this conversation, a free online Open Educational Resources textbook called Aspects of a Writer will be shared. 

March 10, 2023

9:00 am to 10:15 am
Celebrating 30 Years of Flash Anthologies: A Reading from Flash Fiction America
Rooms 433-434, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
Chauna Craig, Sherrie Flick, Rion Amilcar Scott, Venita Blackburn, Terese Svoboda

Norton’s newest flash anthology, Flash Fiction America, features seventy-three stories, all under 1,000 words, that build around the concept of the United States in contemporary times. In a country composed of an incredibly diverse range of people, places, beliefs, and experiences, how do we understand a distinctly American quality in today’s flash fiction? Editors and contributors will read from selections and discuss themes and directions in American flash fiction.

Women in Editing: Burning Down Hierarchies & Building Ladders 
Rooms 445-446, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
Natalie Staples, Catherine Esposito Prescott, Hananah Zaheer (MFA, 2003), Leslie Sainz, Lauren Goodwin Slaughter)

What impact have women editors had in publishing? This diverse panel of editors considers this question from many angles: the editorial decision process, leading a team of volunteers, online and print production, and community outreach and partnership. The panel will unpack how we can amplify the value that women bring to editing from building close relationships to creating systems and cultures within journals that are wary of hierarchies and elevate writing that is often deemed "unliterary."

12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Beyond the Page: Navigating the Editor-Author Relationship in Novels & Stories 
Rooms 347-348, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
Sean Bernard, Allison Wyss (MFA, 2013), Talia Kolluri, Farah Ali, Jennifer Acker

How can fiction editors best achieve the dual goals of their publication and those of their accepted authors'? How can authors best situate themselves to receive critical feedback? How do we navigate disagreement when uncertain power dynamics and cultural considerations are at play? Panelists who’ve held roles as journal and small press editors, and, of course, as writers, share experiences and examine the best and worst practices in navigating this crucial and too rarely discussed relationship.

Filling in the Gaps: Folklore as Antidote to Forgetting
Room 437, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
Temim Fruchter (BA, 2002; MFA, 2019), K-Ming Chang, Isabel Yap, Zeyn Joukhadar, Jami Nakamura Lin

Folklore serves as a powerful proxy for lost memory, especially for marginalized communities with fractured or inaccessible histories. Even in individual families, the line between memory and folklore often blurs. In our writing, can folklore repair what connective tissue has eroded? Can it be used as a craft tool to fill in our own blanks? What forms emerge when imagination and memory occupy the same space? Writers in multiple genres discuss how folklore helps recover what we cannot remember.
 
The Body Politic: Poetry of Motherhood, Trauma & Sexuality 
Rooms 443-444, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
Anna V. Q. Ross, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach (BA, 2008), Keetje Kuipers, Rio Cortez, Erika Meitner

In a year of intensifying armed conflict and continued pandemic, as the US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade and hate crimes reported to the FBI are at a record high, five poet mothers who engage diaspora, sexuality, mental illness, and inherited and received trauma will speak to parenting in troubled times and what Adrienne Rich calls the "long, erotic, unended wrestling of poetry and politics.” The panel will end with an audience Q&A, and attendees will receive creative prompts.

3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
Leading, Styling & Other Navigations: Writers & Editors as Designers
Rooms 333-334, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
Lydia Pejovic, Anna Leahy (MFA, 1993), Keith S. Wilson, Amanda Niehaus, Allison Blevins

Reading experiences depend not only on language but also on the design of the material iteration of a given text. What happens when we think about the printed page or screen as a space for text? What should or could a journal or a poem look like? What if someone reads with their ears instead of their eyes? With accessibility and budget in mind, panelists explore constraints and innovations of physical and digital spaces, share practical design tips, and suggest options for visually driven work.

Misbehaving Memoirs
Signature Room, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 5
Maya Jewell Zeller, Sayantani Dasgupta, Laura Read, Elissa Washuta (BA, 2007) Alexandra Teague

There are multiple ways to structure a story, whether New York knows it or not. In personal essays navigating feminism and faith in India vs. the US; braided essays on multi-ethnicity, slut-shaming, sex work, and consent; lyrics of growing up in the 1970s–80s in a rapist-haunted town; essays that intertwine research and memory to empower oneself in a colonized land; and poetics claiming the magic of what’s wild, we disrupt the shape and content of memoir, imagining new ways it might (mis)behave. 
 

March 11, 2023

1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
How to Make a Ghost Walk: The Craft of Haunted Memoir
Terrace Suite II, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
Jami Nakamura Lin, Elissa Washuta (BA, 2007), Steffan Triplett, J. Nicole Jones, Bruce Owens Grimm

Mood is a distinguishing feature for ghost stories. What mood-setting techniques can haunted memoirists borrow from fictional ghost stories and horror movies to set the right haunted atmosphere for the nonfiction ghost story? This panel will explore that question and other craft issues specific to haunted memoir (using examples from our own work and the work of others) as well as investigate the ethical considerations of making our real-life ghosts walk across the page.

3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
Translating the Poetry of Urgency, Sponsored by ALTA
Room 331, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
Nancy Naomi Carlson, Boris Dralyuk, Cynthia Hogue, Gabriela Ramirez-Chavez, Joshua Weiner

What are “urgent poems”? Although they arise as responses to critical situations, they know no borders and are essential to our survival, as well as our humanity. This panel of poets and scholars—translating from such languages as French (Canada and Congo-Brazzaville), German, Russian, and Spanish / K'iche' Mayan—will briefly discuss, then read bilingual examples of poems that demand to be heard. A Q&A with the audience will follow.

Creative Coding for Creative Writing: Digital Tools in the Poetry Classroom 
Rooms 335-336, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
Collier Nogues, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Lai-Tse Fan, Doug Luman, Keith S. Wilson

Computational and digital poetry tools are increasingly accessible and easy to use, and offer exciting ways to help students compose new work, revise thoughtfully, and hone their sense of purpose as writers. This panel considers the merits of creative coding and other digital practices in poetry classrooms from MFA workshops to undergraduate surveys to high school enrichment programs. We’ll share our experiences using open-source, free, and fun tools to support specific pedagogical goals.