Monday, April 19, 2010

belated awp wrap-up

A big thank you to all who attended my panel at AWP10. I was thrilled with the other essays presented (by Nicole Walker, Shannon Lakanen, and Desirae Matherly) and by the insightful questions and comments from the audience.

Ephemera from the conference:

In "Traces of Places: Finding Our Literary Identities Through Landscapes" (Michael Downs, Debra Marquart, Michael Steinberg, Barbara Hurd, Joe Mackall), Barbara Hurd talked about having two kinds of relationships with place: a storying one and a sensory one. I'm fairly sure she said "sensory" now, but at first I heard "censoring." Ever since, I've been caught in that misheard idea, what a censoring relationship with place would be--where we impose silence on landscape, where it imposes silence on us. The rest of her essay, which I'm almost sure I heard correctly, was also stimulating; I look forward to reading her work.

"Mock-Docs, Fakes, and Hoaxes" (David Lazar, Jeff Porter, Catherine Taylor, Mary Cappello, Patrick Madden) was the most intellectually rigorous and complex of the panels I attended. All of the presenters said something fresh and unique about this topic, giving fakery historical and cultural context. I was positively gleeful. I only wish they could repeat this panel on Oprah.

The key to any successful conference, though, is to have great roommates: a grateful shout-out to Jen Schomburg Kanke, Becca J.R. Lachman, and Carling Futvoye.

No comments:

Post a Comment