Packing for AWP in Tampa next week and inundated by invitations to panels and parties? So are we! But we’re excited, too: AWP is always a big Ecotone/Lookout Books family reunion and we can’t wait to see you. We’ve whittled out a small selection of events, featuring recent Ecotone contributors. Visit us at Tables 1302 and 1304, where we’ll be getting “Craft”-y…
Remember: leave lots of room in your boes and bags for bookfair acquisitions, apply and reapply sunscreen, and hydrate! See you in Tampa.
Thursday
Intersectional South: New Perspectives in Southern Poetry. (Chad Abushanab, John Poch, T.J. Jarrett, Adam Vines, Juliana Gray) In the 21st century, there exists a multitude of Southern poetics defined not by location, but by the variable experiences of the American South. This panel seeks to explore “Southerness” in terms of individual experience in order to highlight new identities and perspectives in contemporary Southern poetry. It brings together a diverse group of poets who will speak to the idea of “Southerness” in literature, and how they see this operating in (or against) their own work.
Room 18 & 19, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Thursday, March 8, 2018
9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.
The Art of Crafting a Chapbook from Start to Finish. (Abigail Beckel, Jennifer Tseng, Dan Mahoney, William Todd Seabrook, Brad Aaron Modlin) What makes a chapbook successful, both in terms of literary merit and sales? This panel will explore best practices for writing, organizing, and publishing chapbooks. Authors will discuss how they conceptualized and structured their chapbook manuscripts, and leading chapbook publishers will talk about what they look for in submissions and how they design and market chapbooks. We’ll also discuss the range of genres—poetry, flash, hybrid work—the short length of a chapbook can effectively showcase.
Room 5 & 6, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Thursday, March 8, 2018
10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
The World Grows: New Directions in Environmental Writing. (Ross Gay, Camille Dungy, Pam Houston, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Diana Owen) Through writing and art that explore the connection between nature and culture, Orion inspires new thinking about how humanity might live on Earth justly, sustainably, and joyously. This panel brings together an award-winning and diverse group of Orion authors who will read original work and discuss new directions in environmental writing, a genre that has become increasingly urgent in today’s world. Room 18 & 19, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Thursday, March 8, 2018
1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.
Poetry, Myth, and the Natural World: A Reading with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Rajiv Mohabir, and Sherwin Bitsui. Sponsored by Blue Flower Arts. (Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Sherwin Bitsui, Alison Granucci, Rajiv Mohabir) The layering of cultures; the complex wonder of the natural world; the riddle of faith; the deep resonance of mythology: what better place for these dimensions to wrestle and converse than in the poetic realm? The urgency inside the poems of Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Rajiv Mohabir, and Sherwin Bitsui offer a complicated empathy with the world, one that grapples with loss and is tinged with sorrow: even beauty can hurt. Yet their language, resplendent with song, also sings into being a world of joy.
Ballroom B, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Thursday, March 8, 2018
4:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.
Friday
The World and the Story: How Plot Maps Fictional Realities. (Leah Stewart, Brock Clarke, Jung Yun, Brenda Peynado, Julialicia Case) In fiction, there’s an interdependent relationship between world-building (the map) and narrative construction (the route). This panel will examine how writers employ different types of stories—the romance, the mystery, the quest—in service to different visions of reality. Why does a realist like Chekhov so often use the romance? For what purposes does a fantasy writer use the quest? How can a writer of literary fiction employ the quest or the mystery to investigate character?
Room 11, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Friday, March 9, 2018
10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
Against Forgetting Against Forgetting: 25 Years Later. (John Poch, Jill Bialosky, Peter Balakian, Jacob Shores-Arguello, Rebecca Gayle Howell) Twenty-five years ago, Carolyn Forche’s groundbreaking anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness, was published. This gathering of poems helped to galvanize an entire generation of poets who came to believe that poems could do more than articulate a poet’s confessional hankerings and could bear witness to history itself. The poets on this panel will read a few of their favorite poems from the anthology and discuss what this book meant and means to their own work and the world.
Florida Salon 5, Marriott Waterside, Second Floor
Friday, March 9, 2018
12:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.
Vassar Miller Poetry Prize 25th Anniversary Reading. (Caki Wilkinson, Alison Stine, James Najarian, Anna Lena Phillips Bell, Jordan Windholz) The Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, founded at the University of North Texas in 1993, honors Texas poet, writer, and disability rights advocate Vassar Miller (1924–1998). To commemorate the prize’s 25th anniversary, writers of winning manuscripts will read from their collections, showcasing the formal and geographic variety of poetry published in the series. The reading will be followed by a Q&A.
Florida Salon, 1, 2, & 3, Marriott Waterside, Second Floor
Friday, March 9, 2018
1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.
Sustainable: On Writing Long and Linked Poems. (Kathryn Nuernberger, Jenny Molberg, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Jacques J. Rancourt, Traci Brimhall) In an age of digestible snippets, we grow hungry for occasions to practice the fine art of paying attention. An art form rooted in mindfulness, the long poem is one way of practicing deliberate attention. Drawing on their own experiences writing and publishing long poems, linked poems, project books, and novels-in-verse, this panel will discuss both the rich literary tradition of long and linked poems, as well as provide insights into the process and craft of creating your own sustained lyrics.
Grand Salon D, Marriott Waterside, Second Floor
Friday, March 9, 2018
3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.
A Woman’s Place: Ecotone Essayists Expand the Boundaries of Place-Based Writing. (Belle Boggs, Anna Lena Phillips Bell, Shuchi Saraswat, Aisha Sabatini Sloan) Contributors to a new anthology from Ecotone and Lookout Books discuss how we can continue to broaden the traditional boundaries of place-based writing to make room for more complexity: explorations of body, sexuality, gender, and race. Joined by their editor, these authors consider how women’s unique experiences and histories make them artful observers of the natural world. They will read from their essays and talk about approaches to intersectionality in the field of environmental writing.
Florida Salon 4, Marriott Waterside, Second Floor
Friday, March 9, 2018
4:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.
The Teaching Press: Bringing Professional Literary Publishing into the Classroom. (Holms Troelstrup, Steve Halle, Deanna Baringer, Ross Tangedal, Beth Staples) Lookout Books at UNC–Wilmington, PRESS 254 at Illinois State University, BatCat Press at Lincoln Park Performing Arts in Pennsylvania, and Cornerstone Press at UW–Stevens Point utilize literary presses as teaching tools for graduate, undergraduate, and secondary students, emphasizing hands-on experience in literary publishing. Panelists detail important practical and curricular concerns in establishing and maintaining a teaching press, as well as the local and national impact of their work.
Room 17, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Friday, March 9, 2018
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm
A Foot in Two Cultures: First Generation American Poets. (John Hoppenthaler, Lauren Camp, Timothy Liu, Adrienne Su) The contemporary influence of poets who were born in the US and whose parents are immigrants has been substantial and important. For these poets, there is an ongoing calibration of the distance between the culture of their parents and their negotiation with the reality and myth of an American Dream. The inherent tensions of this push and pull create a space that can be fruitful for poetry, a space from which the poets who comprise this panel continue to write.
Florida Salon 5, Marriott Waterside, Second Floor
Friday, March 9, 2018
4:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.
Saturday
“Ballade of the Poverties”: A Reading by Beloit Poetry Journal Poets. (Meg Day, Nicelle Davis, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Sally Wen Mao, Carolyn Forché) Writers will read poems inspired by Adrienne Rich’s “Ballade of the Poverties.” Addressed to the princes of predation and finance, this piece reminds us that political poetry isn’t new or newly necessary but remains a vital force for survival, resistance, and change. Audience members will submit lines for inclusion in a collaborative response to “Ballade,” to be printed published on the BPJ website.
Room 20 & 21, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Saturday, March 10, 2018
3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.
Crafting the Weird: Techniques of Fabulist Female Fiction. (Clare Beams, Brenda Peynado, Jamey Bradbury, Celia Johnson, Ramona Ausubel) Surreal, magical, or fabulist fiction has traditionally been employed to attack political systems through subversive means. Yet, women writers have adapted this genre for their own modes of critique. In this event, panelists will discuss how they use elements of the weird to address subjects such as the domestic, the female body, otherness, and LGBTQ identity. Presenters will provide examples, methods, and techniques for crafting subversive fiction that offers new methods of witnessing reality.
Meeting Room 1, Marriott Waterside, Second Floor
Saturday, March 10, 2018
3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.