Neither in Pittsburgh nor Baltimore

Wed 25 Feb 2026 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Leave a Comment | Posted by: Gavin

Being chronically ill gives insight into how the world will go on when one is no longer part of it. We’ve all moved on from social circles, jobs, schools, cities, towns, countries, and we know that life goes on in those places without us.

But to lie on the couch and see annual events — that in the past I would have attended — whoosh by is something else. This post was sparked by the mass of emails and posts on Bluesky about the upcoming AWP Conference and Book Fair*. I unsubscribed from their emails some time ago so I did not even know this year the conference is in Pittsburgh* Baltimore. (Damn! I could visit friends!)

If we were going to AWP, I’d have

  • spent some time last year setting up an event either at a local indie bookstore, or maybe a party with like-minded publishers and friends,
  • booked a hotel room or two as soon as I could last spring and gotten flights for Kelly and I. (As as aside, I was last on a plane in August 2021 and I have no expectation of getting on one any time soon.)
  • found a place to ship books: either to a friend in the city or to a UPS or FedEx store where I could go to in a taxi with my handy hand truck and then hand carry them into the book fair at the convention center.
  • put something silly in as our booth or table name: Small Beer Press Says Abolish Ice, Small Beer Press and Generally Quite Good Bookery, Small Beer Press and the Convention Food Experience, etc., etc.
  • maybe have written something on here about going but hitting that AWP tag above I see I often did not.

Kelly and I would have badges for the book fair and we’d try and table near friends. We’d wander the convention hall trying not to pick up too many books and journals — impossible task. Kelly might do a panel. I might have pitched yet another: “Tiny Presses and The Left Hand of Darkness,” “Publishing in the Anthropocene Idiocracy,” “Weird Shit Is the One True Way,” “Chocolate — or the Treat of Your Choice — with Zines Is a Must,” etc., etc. Would that painful panel be empaneled? Probably not, but it would have been fun to pitch.

10,000 people will descend on Baltimore. The city may not notice except for the huge number of bars which will suddenly have literary events; lunch places within walking/escape distance of the convention center will be happy; and hotels will be wishing that the conference actually brought people with income, not poets who are all crashing with friends.

Many people who once attended AWP won’t this year and many of them won’t miss it. Being in a convention center for 3-4 days is a lot. The organization, the mass of the poetic body politic brought together for a bried moment, never misses the individual.

Having a booth or table gave us a good excuse to go and a good place to rendezvous with friends and meet new people. Book sales would cover some of the rather horrendous travel costs otherwise I don’t think I’d ever have attended. It was a ton of work but we got to catch up with people in different parts of the country. Now my biggest travel is Kelly driving me to Boston for a doctor’s appointment and that usually takes all my energy so I can’t catch up with anyone.

I wrote a little of this each day and as ever with chronic illness, there’s no good ending. I’m here, not there, I miss it. If healthy I’d love to go and I’d wear a goddamn mask and use my nasal spray and I’d have been checking with AWP what the ventilation standards were. Even before I came down with this I had every Covid vaccine offered and masked in public — I thought I was protecting the rest of our family but it turns out I was the (first) unlucky one. Covid is a multisystem infection and we’re going to still be finding out ramifications for years to come.

A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down! (Wear a mask!)

[* Aha! It’s Winter Institute right now in Pittsburgh: 1,500 or so booksellers, writers, publishers, und so weiter! Kelly went a couple of times as an author and I really enjoyed the one I attended in January 2020.]

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