Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
AWP 2008
2008 AWP was a blast of energy. We were part of a wave. 7,500 writers attended, including two Gotham friends, Deonne Kahler and Lori Reisenbichler. Joyce Carol Oates and John Irving gave advice: start small and you’ll make fewer mistakes, and start from the end and write your way towards. I missed Russell Banks, who encouraged a community of writers.
Marilyn Krysl (the thing around them) has taken on the world. Shatter your mirrors, she said, before reading from her heart-shattering collection, Dinner with Osama. Her sweet strong voice carried pain and suffering and compassion, tales from the Sudan war she learned about while volunteering there. I can’t imagine learning that kind of pain, processing it, balancing it, humanizing it. Her work is amazing, she is amazing.
Amy Hempel (the Harvest) gives us emotional pain, personal pain, beautiful rendered, as in cooking, boiled down to essence, with only the tasty parts remaining. The last of three stories she read felt like a poem. Take up space, an older woman told another, in a different story. How amazing to watch her face and hear her voice as she reads her work to a rapt audience.
Peter Cameron read with Hempel. Like hers, his work is personal and funny. Plus, he told an anecdote about being on a watch list at the hotel years ago, which made the fire alarm that went off in the middle of his reading seem funny. We were all angry to have him interrupted.
Billy Collins rocks. You have to read Workshop if you’ve ever been in a writing workshop. His poems were belly laugh funny and so much more. The Lanyard, Flock, January in Paris and Tension were among my favorites.
The panel discussions were mixed, and I didn’t do that many. The one on sex in fiction was entertaining, but the moral of the story, be true to your characters, was pretty much common sense. Like everything else, sex scenes have to be chosen carefully and used to convey emotion to the reader. A panel discussion on the differing expectations of publishers/agents and academic workshops was interesting, but I learned more from Deonne’s friend Summer Wood who was selling her newest novel and has a new agent. Bottom line: you need an agent who’s really into you, or at least your stuff, and if you’re querying cold, find one who’s writing is like yours.
There weren’t a lot of editors or agents at the conference, just small literary magazines. If I’d had stuff ready, it would have been more productive.
Deonne and I glimpsed a page of Martin Amis’ notebook. We were having breakfast at the hotel (2 bagels and 2 coffees--$25; would have been over 50 if we’d had eggs). Anyway, Amis was sitting near us in the dining room and was out of his chair when we were leaving. While we could see the notes very clearly, neither one of us could make out his handwriting.
I also saw David Morse on the street.
And, what a proud moment when a very intelligent and observant woman asked me: are you from here? as I was walking up 6th Avenue. Never mind that she was probably from the smallest town in the United States or possibly Canada or that I was carrying my conference bag.
What else? We had a lot of fun, Deonne, Lori, Julie ( a friend of Lori’s from Spalding) and I. And if you get a chance to see Autumn: Osage County, do. It’s amazing.
Marilyn Krysl (the thing around them) has taken on the world. Shatter your mirrors, she said, before reading from her heart-shattering collection, Dinner with Osama. Her sweet strong voice carried pain and suffering and compassion, tales from the Sudan war she learned about while volunteering there. I can’t imagine learning that kind of pain, processing it, balancing it, humanizing it. Her work is amazing, she is amazing.
Amy Hempel (the Harvest) gives us emotional pain, personal pain, beautiful rendered, as in cooking, boiled down to essence, with only the tasty parts remaining. The last of three stories she read felt like a poem. Take up space, an older woman told another, in a different story. How amazing to watch her face and hear her voice as she reads her work to a rapt audience.
Peter Cameron read with Hempel. Like hers, his work is personal and funny. Plus, he told an anecdote about being on a watch list at the hotel years ago, which made the fire alarm that went off in the middle of his reading seem funny. We were all angry to have him interrupted.
Billy Collins rocks. You have to read Workshop if you’ve ever been in a writing workshop. His poems were belly laugh funny and so much more. The Lanyard, Flock, January in Paris and Tension were among my favorites.
The panel discussions were mixed, and I didn’t do that many. The one on sex in fiction was entertaining, but the moral of the story, be true to your characters, was pretty much common sense. Like everything else, sex scenes have to be chosen carefully and used to convey emotion to the reader. A panel discussion on the differing expectations of publishers/agents and academic workshops was interesting, but I learned more from Deonne’s friend Summer Wood who was selling her newest novel and has a new agent. Bottom line: you need an agent who’s really into you, or at least your stuff, and if you’re querying cold, find one who’s writing is like yours.
There weren’t a lot of editors or agents at the conference, just small literary magazines. If I’d had stuff ready, it would have been more productive.
Deonne and I glimpsed a page of Martin Amis’ notebook. We were having breakfast at the hotel (2 bagels and 2 coffees--$25; would have been over 50 if we’d had eggs). Anyway, Amis was sitting near us in the dining room and was out of his chair when we were leaving. While we could see the notes very clearly, neither one of us could make out his handwriting.
I also saw David Morse on the street.
And, what a proud moment when a very intelligent and observant woman asked me: are you from here? as I was walking up 6th Avenue. Never mind that she was probably from the smallest town in the United States or possibly Canada or that I was carrying my conference bag.
What else? We had a lot of fun, Deonne, Lori, Julie ( a friend of Lori’s from Spalding) and I. And if you get a chance to see Autumn: Osage County, do. It’s amazing.
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