AWP, Small-Scale

During my Spring Break, I went down to San Antonio for the annual AWP conference. Actually, I went down early in order to do a little bit of research on a great-grandfather who went down there in the 1890s and changed his name, but that's a whole other story!

The AWP conference is normally a huge event. Both CAA and ASEEES, which I attend every year as an art historian specializing in Czech Modernism, are very large, but AWP is gigantic, as in addition to writing professors and their MFA students, it also attracts lots of undergraduates and writers not affiliated with universities (or who, like me, work in a different department), plus loads of people who work at presses and literary journals.

This year was different.

Had AWP been scheduled for just two weeks later, it would almost certainly have been cancelled to prevent spread of coronavirus. However, it fell in that weird moment when the virus was spreading and people were getting worried, but the US had not really faced the problem. (No, the US certainly has still not really faced the problem, but at least more people, especially state and local governments, are waking up to it.) Consequently, the AWP conference was not cancelled, but the organizers recognized that many people would not feel safe attending, and let everyone know that that was okay. "If you... have requested to defer your registration to #AWP21 or a refund for #AWP20, please note that we will begin to process refunds on March 10."

Rightly or wrongly, I was among those who went ahead and traveled. I planned to be as careful as possible, although I knew that that might not fully protect me. Still, I wore gloves most of the time (wearing leather gloves in weather approaching 80 degrees was a little strange, but...), washed my hands frequently in the manner recommended, mostly managed to avoid touching people, etc. We'll see. At that time, few cases had been reported in the US, and while I was sure there were more than reported, back then it seemed plausible that the virus was not widely infecting the community.

Attendance was light, and many exhibitor booths were empty. Although AWP kept updating the panel cancellations, not every cancelled panel alerted AWP that no one would attend. I managed to attend a few panels on book promotion and/or what the first year of your first book can be like; I also went to one or two on craft (not particularly impressive ones, I'm afraid); and a panel of writers who had used family stories (particularly about immigrants) in their fiction. This last, and the promotion panels, were very good.

I got to see a couple of Bay Area friends, and had a surprising and delightful reunion with a writer friend with whom I'd been out of touch for about thirty years. As usual at AWP, I talked to quite a few editors and other staff people at various presses and journals. I bought more books by André Alexis at the Coach House booth, where I also got other promising Canadian fiction. Indeed, I bought as many books as I thought I could pack in my luggage, like Carmen Boullosa's The Book of Anna and Camilla Grudova's The Doll's Alphabet from Coffee House Press, Joao Gilberto Noll's Atlantic Hotel from Two Lines Press, Micheline Aharonian Marcom's The Brick House from Awst Press, Joanna Pearson's Every Human Love from Acre Press, Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow from ECW Press, Chris Geier's Silt directly from the author (Alternating Current Press), and Christina Chiu's Beauty directly from the author (SfWP). Naturally there were many more books from many other presses that I was also tempted to buy!

Now to stay home and read and write.