AWP 2024

Thu 8 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., AWP| Posted by: Gavin

Some years ago I got a positive result on my test to see whether they will print anything in the AWP listings of exhibiting publishers:

On Wednesday afternoon I realized the 2024 AWP Conference & Bookfair would just be beginning. Pre-pandemic, pre-long Covid I’d have been taking 8-10 boxes of books into the conference center either on a tiny hand truck I took along or asking people if I could borrow one. Thanks again Coffee House, Copper Canyon, and the many other kind people over the years who lent me one when I didn’t bring one or just plain forgot.

The conference moves around so occasionally Kelly and I drove to it, other times we flew. We often mailed books to friends’ houses and that gave me a good way to catch up with people. I sometimes sent them to a nearby UPS or Fedex — once I tried to UPS some boxes to a Fedex office and apparently that is a Spy vs Spy level no-no-no! Had to change the delivery address. Then I’d pick up the boxes in a (very surprised) taxi, get them to the place, get them on the dolly/hand truck, and walk them in. It was way too expensive for us to use the official shipper and the conference haulers.

I think I reserved a table in the bookfair in 2023 because, really, how sick could I be in 2022 that I would not be able to go? Silly me. AWP is going to be back in LA next year, what a great place for it. The lunches I was able to walk out and find when we were there! Anyway, doubt we will be there.

We occasionally co-hosted parties. Sometimes great fun. Excellent to be able to pay back and pay forward other people who hosted some great dance parties over the years.

I liked to set up a reading on the Wednesday evening if possible — we had one at the Last Bookstore and one at Politics & Prose — so after the Wednesday morning flight, or maybe Tuesday night if I was feeling fancy, we’d be hustling around to get ready. Kelly would read along with as many Small Beer authors as were at the conference. Abbey Mei Otis read in DC along with We’d ask them to sign at the bookfair table at some point, too. Woah, imagine if we went this year with Kelly’s book coming out. Not sure I could lift that many boxes.

I really liked tabling at events, being right there seeing what people like to read, seeing the covers they like, seeing if they like short stories or if they’re just looking for a place to sell their memoir. (We were a great nonfiction market for older woman writers of weird fiction from Oregon.) There’s nothing like being available to writers and readers and people who don’t know you from Adam and have questions, so many great questions. I’d sometimes get to panels but I’d find it hard to skip meeting friends and strangers in the bookfair. I usually brought home 15-20 books and magazines at least?

Anyway, we’re not there this year and neither will we be at the ABA Winter Institute in Cincinnati next weekend. Good golly that’s a level of frustration. I’d love to be there: went to my first one in Baltimore in January 2020, four months after we’d opened Book Moon, met some great people, learned a lot. Kelly was going, too, but on the train down we got a call from her mom that our kid, who had a bad cold, had gotten worse. Could we come back? Kelly has an incredible knowledge of our kid when sick and an ability to know what they need so we talked about both of us going back or just one of us, and soon enough she was on her way back. It’s ok, we thought, we’ll both go in 2021.

The kid recovered, Kelly and I got slight colds; something was going around. We don’t think it was Covid, but there weren’t tests, so like everyone else, it’s a maybe. We’re not going to Boskone this weekend — but Kate & her husband are tabling for Small Beer & Book Moon for their first time there. If you’re there, please say hello! Hope they’ll have fun, meet good people, sell some books. We last went to Boskone in 2020 and our kid had a great time. We didn’t catch Covid there, even though some people from Boskone went to the Boston superspreader international biotechnology conference that same weekend. Everything comes back to Covid these years. Since it’s the reason we’re not doing any of these things this year, I suppose that’s ok.

Anyway, off to read some LCRW submissions for the next zine!

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AWP

Sun 10 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., AWP, conventions, keep it indie, local power, Publishing| Posted by: Gavin

I never managed to catch up with all the people I hoped to, I enjoyed the bookfair so much I didn’t see any panels, I didn’t manage to arrive on time 2 out of 3 mornings, but besides all that, AWP was, somewhat unexpectedly, a ton of fun! We have a pile of new books from a few quick trips around the fair—including a new subscription to Tin House and more poetry than I’ve gotten in ages. It was invigorating to spend three days with 13,000(!) people who care deeply in one way or another about words on pages. (Not as much chat about ebooks as expected, none about the possible horrors of the used ebook market, yay!)

We stayed with friends (to whom we are very grateful!) and Kelly’s mom looked after Ursula (and brought her in on Saturday when the fair was open to everyone) which made the whole thing much more relaxed.

Friday there was a snowstorm so I was late. On Saturday morning smoke started coming out of the ceiling of the T at Fenway. “Driver, there’s smoke in here,” someone shouted. Doors opened: we all trooped out. Looked like a long wait, walked in.

Our neighbors in the fair were the very lively H_ngm_n Books on one side and our real-life near neighbors, the excellent Perugia Press. I am very happy to say that somewhere in that 13,000 people there is a contingent who read books from H_ngm_n, Small Beer, and Perugia.

We talked to hundreds of people and I owe apologies to some people for the times when I could not stop my anti-Am*zon invective: sorry. (They really do want to put everyone else out of business and all the fun out of life. Ya boo sucks to them.)

We sold out of LCRW on the second day: awesome! Wish I had brought more but it was—again—invigorating to meet so many readers.

I can’t even begin to list the excellent people I met. Wait, I can. People from: Paris Press, One Story, Milkweed, McNally Jackson, Porter Square Books, Coffee House (got a copy of Raymond McDaniel’s new superhero-themed poetry collection(!) Special Powers and Abilities and Geronimo Johnson’s excellent sounding New Orleans novel, Hold It ‘Til It Hurts—which is one of two Coffee House titles, the other being Laird Hunt’s Kind One, up for the Pen/Faulkner Award!), Shape & Nature, Eleven Eleven, Unstuck, Biblioasis, oh, wait, no I can’t list everyone. Sore hands and: Lists = I will miss people, sorry friends! And! We just added Puerto del Sol over on Weightless so while I met tons of people from New Mexico State U., I am kicking myself for missing the Puerto del Sol table. Argh, mea culpa. Didn’t take photos. Argh x 2.

It turns out tons of our books are being taught in schools around the country, including Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See and Other Stories, Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s A Life on Paper, Ted Chiang’sStories of Your Life and Others, and others including pretty much all of Kelly’s books. For which I say to all those teachers: it was awesome and heartening to hear that you are reading and teaching and studying these books. Thank you!

And that’s it. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi. Hope you got home ok and that you too went home with some books you’re looking forward to reading.

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That AWP thing

Mon 4 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., AWP, conventions, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

Hey, Thursday through Saturday of this week we will be participating in the annual literary scrum commonly known as AWP. This year it’s in Boston where the weather should be a comfy 40 degrees (or 5 centigrade) with maybe rain and snow TK. Yay! Bring your boots!

Before I forget: on Saturday the book fair is OPEN TO EVERYONE! Come on by! It’s in Exhibit Halls A, B, & D,  Plaza & Level 2. Phew.

We haven’t been to AWP since 2009 and it will be awesome and overwhelming to catch up with everyone and see  all the new flashy things that people are up to. Woohoo! Kelly is teaching at UMass Amherst on Wednesday afternoon, so we drive to Boston in the evening—already missing out on the early parties! Oh well. Thursday or Friday early in the evening she is part of a UNCG alumni reading somewhere in Cambridge (details TK). Other than that, not sure how many things we’ll be doing. Would love to see Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott in conversation . . . But there may have to be strategic withdrawals as we are old, and, of course, parents!

The best thing about the whole bedazzling thing: it’s being held at the Hynes Convention Center. Ok, that’s not soooo fab, but it is within a quick T/bus/taxi/car ride to Yoma Burmese restaurant and Pho Saigon (both in Allston), the latter of which is in the Super 88 Hong Kong Supermarket food court  and they have the best banh mi sandwichs. Otherwise, sure there are plenty of restaurants around the convention center. The worst thing: the Other Side Cafe closed last year. Oh I am so sad.

Anyway, the conference is expected to be brutal. Woohoo! We will be at table L26 in the book fair—no doubt behind a pillar, under the a/c, so far from where it’s all happening, man, that when we look around we are actually in New Hampshire. But, hey, we will have books on sale! Or, books for sale at discount prices? Something like that. Also, we like trades, so bring them on!

Kelly is on one panel at 9 am on Thursday morning with two local-to-us writers, John Crowley and Jane Yolen, one used-to-be-local writer, Kate Bernheimer, and one new-to-me writer, Anjali Sachdeva:

Room 107, Plaza Level

R108. Modern Fairy Tales and Retellings. (Anjali Sachdeva, John Crowley, Jane Yolen, Kelly Link, Kate Bernheimer) Many of us grew up reading the same stories our grandparents read when they were children. But contemporary writers are also creating their own fairy tales or crafting surprising variations on traditional stories, for both children and adults. In this panel, authors who have written modern retellings of old tales will discuss the need for fables in modern society and the literary marketplace, as well as the writing process they use to go beyond archetype and tradition to create new tales.

(Here’s the schedule. Note, that’s just Thursday. AWP is a just little huge.)

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AWP

Mon 13 Mar 2006 - Filed under: Not a Journal., AWP, Cons, Howard Waldrop| Posted by: Gavin

AWP, Austin, Texas: Well, you had to be there. Wait, too annoying? Ok. It was a blast. We will probably go back to AWP next year in Atlanta, Georgia. If you want to put together a panel, email us. The proposals have to be in by May 1.

Food in Austin is fan-foodie-tastic. Breakfasts at the must-go-back-to Las Manitas Avenue Cafe — where some newspaper piece warned of the possibility of running into Karl Rove. And me not exercising my right to bear arms (very necessary if any Friend of Cheney is around). Was that tipping the free speech card a little early? Back to food. Manuel’s has great margaritas (and wandering Iowa poets) which made waiting around survivable then the little bit fancy good Mexican food (and actually spicy salsa) was verrry welcome.

Reading at Book People seemed to go well — 6 readers and it didn’t run over long. Phew. Book People started off as “Grok Books” — how funny is that? Huge store, tons of great books, so much space for all the good books (and huge shelves of staff picks) that they have tons of, uh, junk? Or sidelines, you pick. Being we were overstuffed with books and lit mags and so on, we bought books, cards and a Keep Austin Weird T-shirt — which kind of campaign you might want to get behind if you likes your local town stuff before it all becomes McWal-Margeted. The reading was put together by Omnidawn, who successfully launched their new short fiction anthology Paraspheres. [Between that and the upcoming Firebirds Rising anthology that’s the start of a pretty good year for spec. fic. short stories.] Tons of new fiction and some fave stories from Kim Stanley Robinson and Alasdair Gray.

Did it suck that SXSW was starting as we were leaving? Yes. But we wouldn’t have had a place to stay or tix to see anything. Before we left we had breakfast with Howard Waldrop and Martha Grenon at Guero’s (another great breakfast, oy!). Will need to add her site which has many excellent pix from Kosovo and Albania. In the meantime there’s this book site.

On our second try, we saw the bats!

One flying thing: if you can avoid United Airlines: do. Good lord. Fortunately there was plenty to read while waiting including the Backwards City Review and the Doris anthology.

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