Well, I had to cancel my plans at the last minute, and can’t attend AWP in DC this year. I’m really bummed, but sometimes life gets in the way – work, family, my MFA thesis, my next novel, time, money, you name it. Sometimes you have to take a pass. When I’m sitting with my son at his first Pinewood Derby I doubt I’ll be thinking about AWP. SO, I’m passing on to you, talented author, dreamer of vision, painter of lives, my list of panels that I was thinking of attending.

My picks have a lot to do with where I am as an author, what I’m looking to do, and who I know. So, I often drop by panels to see friends speak, or maybe it’s a panel on pedagogy or teaching, since I’m finishing up my MFA this year. There are a lot of panels on the future of writing, or publishing, those are always compelling. Sometimes I just want to hear somebody read. So, my picks may not match up with yours, but maybe it’ll give you some ideas.

Obviously you can only pick one panel per time period, so I’ll leave that up to you. I’ll asterisk (*) something if it really jumps out as a MUST SEE.

WEDNESDAY:

Not much going on, mostly people getting into town. I’m sure there are parties Wednesday night.

THURSDAY:

9:00 – 10:15

R110. Hired!: Landing the Elusive Tenure-Track Job.
This looked interesting, as I’m looking for work in 2011.

R113. Hands On: A Conversation about DIY and Craft Culture in a Digital World.
I thought this also had a lot of appeal as I’ve published in some crafty, handmade rags (such as Vain) and wanted to see what they had to say about this whole DIY culture.

10:30 – 11:45

R131. What They Didn’t Tell Us, We Will Tell You: Four First-Time Authors Discuss the Nitty Gritty of Publishing.
Siobhan Fallon is a friend of mine, so I wanted to hear her story about her first novel, and since my first novel came out last year as well (Transubstantiate) I thought it might be of value to me.

R132. Things That Go Bump When You Write: Monsters, Myths, and the Supernatural in Literary Fiction.*
This one looked really good to me, and I’m a fan of Laura van den Berg. I liked to work with fantasy, the supernatural, a bit of magical realism now and then, so this plus the literary angle appealed to me.

Noon – 1:15

R160. The Future of the Book Review: How to Break In.
I write book reviews for The Nervous Breakdown so I thought this might be interesting. And Roxane Gay is on this panel, and I like her work and attitude.

1:30 – 2:45

R174. Representing the Erotic in Literary Fiction.
Sex always gets people to show up. I put a bit of sex, and the erotic, in my work, so this looked like a fun one.

R179. CLMP Keynote—Size Matters: Big Houses, Small Presses, and the Literary Ecology of American Publishing.
I don’t hit TOO many keynotes, but this one covers a lot of things that interest me, small vs. large presses, for example.

3:00 – 4:15

R197. A 45th-Anniversary Fiction Reading by the Faculty of the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Basically I just wanted to hear Holly Goddard Jones read and speak. She’s a friend of mine, taught at MSU where I’m getting my MFA, and an author I really love.

R198. Honoring Robert Coover.
Worth it to hear Coover as well as Brian Evenson.

4:30 – 5:15

R213. Understanding Comics as Creative Writing.*
This looked really good. I’m trying to break into comics, working on some samples right now, and this should be a fascinating panel.

R221. Fiction’s Future.
I try not to attend TOO many of these kinds of panels, but Lance Olsen and Roy Kesey make it worth attending, IMO. Lance is at FC2 and I’m a fan of Roy’s work. Both good guys, very giving and supportive as well.

NIGHT:

I was supposed to attend a reading at The Velvet Lounge with a bunch of friends, so go do that. It should be a great show. Caleb J. Ross, Brandon Tietz, Jesus Angel Garcia, Nik Korpon, Joe McGinniss Jr., Michael Sonbert, and Jillian Weise. 7-9 pm. 915 U St NW.

FRIDAY:

9:00 – 10:15

F114. Arktoi Books Celebrates Five Years of Lesbian Publishing!
Basically I wanted to see Nickole Brown read, she’s a friend and mentor of mine down at MSU. Very talented poet and author.

10:30 – 11:15

F132. How to start a literary center and thrive through the decades.
I’ve wanted to start a co-op for years, and this seemed like a very informative an useful panel.

F134. To Tell You the Truth: Strategies in the New Nonfiction.
I don’t write much NF, but I wanted to hear Nick Flynn and Stephen Elliott speak, those two are always entertaining and very smart, two talented authors.

F136. Jets vs. Sharks?
Richard Bausch and Jill McCorkle, nuff said.

NOON – 1:15

F146. A Reading by Joyce Carol Oates.
I’ve heard mixed things about her readings, but I’m a fan of her work, so this could be fun.

1:30 – 2:45
Nothing looked great. Have a long lunch instead.

3:00 – 4:45

F191. Hollins Graduate Program 50th Anniversary Reading.
Karen McElmurray is a friend and teacher down at MSU. Another chance to hear Jill McCorkle read too.

4:30 – 5:45

F212. A Reading by Mary Gaitskill and Sapphire, Sponsored by Wilkes University Low Residency MA/MFA Program in Association with Blue Flower Arts.*
I’m a huge fan of Mary Gaitskill, and I’m really bummed that I’ll miss this. Was going to have her sign my copy of Bad Behavior.

NIGHT:

Vermin on the Mount is the place to be. http://vermin.blogs.com/vermin_on_the_mount/2011/01/votm-awp-dc.html

WHO: Kim Chinquee, Roy Kesey, Amber Sparks, Lindsay Hunter, Nicolette Kittinger, Tom Williams, Al Heathcock & Scott McClanahan

WHEN: Friday, Feb 4 at 8pm

WHERE: Mie N Yu 3125 M Street in Georgetown

SATURDAY:

9:00 – 10:15

S111. Small Ships, Deep Ocean: Independent Presses Keep Short Story Collections Afloat.
Love short stories and this seemed cool. Laura van den Berg.

10:30 – 11:45

Nothing jumped out at me.

NOON – 1:15

S149. America Reimagined: Four Contemporary Voices, Sponsored by Blue Flower Arts.*
A great list of really talented authors: Ben Percy, Jennifer Egan, Rick Moody, Joshua Ferris. This should be a great event. It’s in a ballroom, don’t know how big it is, but this should be a really hot ticket. Get there early.

1:30 – 2:45

S171. What We Love; What Editors Are After.
These things are always a crapshoot, just write what you want, what moves you, but sometimes you get a nugget or two from some cool people. Editors from the Believer, Graywolf Press, Milkweed Editions, Orion, Soft Skull Press, and Tin House, so definitely worth it.

S177. The Road Less Traveled: How to be a Writer Without a Full-time Academic Gig.*
Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond, that’s worth it right there, but I love the focus of this panel, and am really hoping I can get some literature or a podcast of this one.

S184. Change or Die: How Established Print Journals are Adapting to Life on the Internet.
Love the title. A lot of journals are adding an online presence or moving online due to the costs and difficulties of having a print journal. Should be good.

3:00 – 4:15

S189. Linking It Up: Working with Story Cycles, Linked Collections, and Novels-in-Stories.
Big fan of Knockemstiff, so I thought this would be a really good panel to attend, fascinating, imo.

S191. Graywolf Press Reading.
Chance to see Nick Flynn and Stephen Elliott again if you missed them earlier. Big fan of Graywolf, too.

4:30 – 5:15

Nothing jumped out, so get to drinking now.

NIGHT:

There’s the Amy Hempel and Gary Shteyngart reading, that looked really good. I’m sure there are tons of parties too.

SO…that’s all I’ve got. Hit the bookfair as often as you can between panels, that’s a great way to do research, get discounted title and journals, and meet some of you favorite authors, network and pimp your wares. Bottom line, have fun.

Wish I was going. Drop me a line at wickerkat@aol.com if you have something to share or any questions.

(Lori A. May, Kathleen Driskell, Tod Goldberg, Meg Kearney, Michael Kobre) Low-residency program directors will discuss innovative approaches to providing value-added opportunities for students at a distance—regardless of varied geographic locales. Topics include adaptability in pedagogical training, funded editorships and real-world publishing experiences, online approaches to the traditional workshop model, the inclusion of commercial projects in film and television, and how students may become involved in a reading series or literary journal.

When: Friday, Feb 4th: 9:00 a.m.-10:15 p.m.

Caleb J Ross: You said something at last year’s AWP which stuck with me. Paraphrased, of course, you said that you teach your MFA classes like an instructor of any trade program might, with the end goal of providing financial opportunities for the students. This seems like a radically different approach than most MFAs which may instead focus on non-definable, creative signposts to gauge student success. First, am I expressing your idea correctly? Second, how is this goal compromised by a low-residency program, if it even is?

Tod Goldberg: Pretty close. Essentially my philosophy is that if you’re in an MFA program, your goal isn’t to become the most well-read person on earth with a handful of literary quotes at your disposal at all times, it’s to be published. It’s to be produced. Graduate programs in creative writing are some of the few that seem entirely esoteric because they don’t seem to be training you for anything tangible, apart from maybe being a particularly enlightened barista, because, well, that’s frequently the case. But I think that has to change. Being a professional writer is a job. And if you want to write books, or write screenplays, or write poetry, simply for personal edification, you certainly don’t need an MFA program to do that. But if you want to become a professional writer, I think an MFA program can and should be a clear stepping stone in that direction. Most aren’t. Most entirely eschew the idea of life after the MFA — in fact, most programs tend to herald your acceptance into the program as the “making it” part of your writing career, which is silly. It’s school. It’s what you do afterward that makes a difference. So in that light we talk about publishing and production a great deal in the program I run at UCR, about the difference between being workshop-good and publication or production good. We have agents and editors and film producers and studio heads that come in an read our students work and give them a real world idea of where they stand. And our professors are doing it, too (no one works in the program in the professor who isn’t still publishing or producing).

I got my MFA late in the game — I’d already published 5 books, countless short stories, sold several projects to Hollywood, written hundreds of pieces of journalism and was actually directing two MFA programs at the time (before going to strictly a low residency MFA, UCR Palm Desert also had a part-time traditional MFA program, too) — when I went to get my MFA from Bennington, so I feel that I have a unique perspective on this. Clearly, I didn’t need an MFA to be successful. But my experience with one particular professor at Bennington, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, opened my eyes regarding how to become a better writer, how to build on what I did well already, and that alone was worth the price of admission, and I believe that comes from that mentor/mentee relationship that low residency programs foster.

So I don’t think this philosophy of mine is hampered in the least by low residency program; in fact, I believe it is the best avenue to pursue this line of thinking. Being in a low residency program mimics the life of the professional writer. You’re probably balancing your writing with another job, you’re probably also writing some stuff like book reviews on top of your creative work (or doing coverage if you’re a screenwriter) and you’re probably at home on the weekends, up until late in night, in your underwear, typing.

CJR: What have you observed as main differences between students full-residency programs and those of low-residency programs, in terms of being motivated and concerned with job opportunities?

TG: In low residency programs, the students are older, generally more career-oriented, and are spending their own money on their education, so the desire to have some end result that is easily within grasp is much more predominant. They are there because they don’t want the life they have, they want to become professional writers or, in some cases, they are professional writers and they want to also teach and thus need that degree to do so. The end result is that they tend to be pretty driven and you don’t need to pester them for their work.

In traditional programs, the age is a little younger, they tend to have the same literary goals but they are often matched with unrealistic end results — I want to make millions! I think this book will be a great movie! [Every time someone says that, an orphan is murdered. I truly believe that.] — and, since they often aren’t paying their own way, the attrition rate is a little higher, too. But I think the biggest difference is this: When you’re in a traditional program, you’re living in the academy, so to speak. Your whole life revolves around the university. You’re learning there. You’re probably teaching there. Your drama, your love life, your caloric intake…all of it happens somewhere near a quad, or a commons, and, well, it’s not real life. That’s not to say it’s bad — I think it’s great, actually — but it’s different than what happens to a student in a low residency, who is living a different kind of life and still is expected to turn out a great sum of work.

CJR: The description of your AWP panel (above) mentions online approaches to the workshop model. As someone who has a personal interest in the online model, I am interested to know if there are any hard-and-fast rules for making this type of environment conducive to great critique? Or, is it that the online model provides a better experience, and the in-person model has something to learn?

TG: The chief difference I’ve noticed over the course of the last decade that I’ve been teaching is that students working online seem to progress faster. I think it’s for a simple reason: When you’re getting workshopped in a classroom, you really don’t process what you’re hearing, which is to say you hear “you suck, you suck, you suck, you suck” and then maybe you hear “you’re great, you’re great, you’re great, you’re great” and you go home and the nuance of the arguments about your work are hard to piece together. But online, when you receive a written examination of your work from your professor (and it should be noted that at UCR, the students don’t critique each other during the online portion of the term; this is just the criticism between the professor and the student) you have time to process it before responding. You can then have that give in take, in writing, with your professor and the process gets drawn out over a period of time and becomes more varied and instructive — plus, the technology itself allows you to quickly, say, insert a passage from X book as an example of something. And of course what’s also happening is that the other students are reading along (we use Blackboard at UCR and the critique process is open for all the people in the workshop to see) and learning from things and then referencing critiques in responses to lectures and such. That’s another important aspect to what we do online: there’s a great sum of craft taught online, too, through lectures and reading and such, which is then followed by conversations online between the students, which fosters both a sense of community and an intellectual exchange of ideas, vs. just the professor saying, “Your dialog needs work.”

That said, I think the in-person part of workshopping is very important, too, which is why I don’t think strictly online programs work as well. By having the online portion and then 10 days of workshops in person, that sense that you’re dealing with real people, with real emotions, with difficult subjects on their plate, really coalesces into a whole. You get to know a person, you get to understand how and what they need to become better writers. This is a human business we’re in and I think the online experience removes that sometimes, or it can.

Finally, what online learning really does, for writers, is very simple: it allows them to express themselves in the way they are most comfortable and lucid — with words on a page. Plenty of writers are great on the page but then you meet them and they just can’t express themselves very well. The online classroom removes that aspect and allows the writer to be in a comfortable medium, which is part of why I think they end up progressing so rapidly.

CJR: What makes the low-residency program worthy of its panel? Why should people come to your panel, given the wide selection of available panels?

TG: Well, let’s see. I’ll probably swear a lot. I’ll probably offend someone in the audience, who will then get up in a noisy huff and storm out while I point out that they’ve made a huff and are storming out, which is always a fun thing to see. There’s a high probability I’ll tell off-color jokes about the other panelists. At some point, I’ll tell someone that they should transfer programs if they aren’t allowed to write genre fiction [This makes me crazy, too...I mean, seriously, people in academia, who the fuck cares what your students are writing as long as it's good?] which will then cause someone else to storm out. And then? Well, then I’m going to hustle out in time to see Josh Ritter on his panel.

Tod Goldberg is the author of the novels Living Dead Girl (Soho Press), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Fake Liar Cheat (Pocket Books/MTV), and the popular Burn Notice series, as well as two collections of short stories, Simplify (Other Voices Books), a 2006 finalist for the SCIBA Award for Fiction and winner of he Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize and Other Resort Cities (Other Voices Books). His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Black Clock, The Normal School and The Sun, twice receiving Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize as well as being named a Distinguished Story of the Year in the 2009 Best American Mystery Stories. His essays, journalism, and criticism appear regularly in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Las Vegas CityLife and have earned four Nevada Press Association Awards for excellence. Tod Goldberg holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature from Bennington College and directs the Low Residency MFA program in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside. He lives in La Quinta, CA with his wife, the writer Wendy Duren.

Here we discuss topics relating to his panel, extract below:

S115. Crime, Horror, Sci‐Fi, and Fantasy… Seriously. (Anthony Smith, Brian Evenson, Stephen Graham Jones, Tod Goldberg, Mark Smith, Seth Harwood) Six writers of genre fiction who also teach and/or have graduated from university creative writing programs discuss how they approach genre fiction as a serious literary pursuit rather than as a lesser form of fiction. In addition, they discuss attitudes towards genre fiction in the university and how those attitudes have changed over the years.

I want to personally thank Mr. Brian Evenson for taking time out of his day to chat with me. He has made this fanboy quite happy.

Be sure to visit his website for details about this amazing author.

See the bottom of the sidebar to the left for all the podcast subscription options.

Where: Room 203
Colorado Convention
Center, Street Level

When: Saturday- April 10, 2010 3:00 p.m.-4:15 p.m.

1) What sort of audience do you anticipate for this panel? You’ve done this one for a few years now; does the economic turbulence as of late make an information panel about hiring more necessary?

I’m expecting a lot of new MFAs to attend the panel. People who are finishing their graduate programs are hitting a difficult market, and they want to know what to do to give themselves an edge in the hiring process. Certainly the recent economic climate makes job searching a more anxious process than it might have been before, but the general need among creative writers for more training relative to jobs and careers is universal.

2) How will the information presented at this panel be different than standard firm handshake, do your research, carry a copy of your resume advice?

We’re going to make sure that attendees understand the broad organizing principles behind the search. From the applicant standpoint, you see your role in things. You may not understand the larger picture that’s behind that. Think about publishing. When you send your work off, you don’t necessarily understand the workings of literary publishing, the people staffing the journals to which you send your work, the way those journals are funded, how their decisions are made, the interpersonal dynamics involved. Maybe you don’t need to know all that stuff–just keep your head down and write well, and eventually you’ll break through, right? Then again, seeing a little bit of the other side of it can help you to not make any obvious mistakes, and can help you to put yourself forward with more success. The hiring information is much the same. If you haven’t served on a hiring committee, listened to phone interviews, seen some of the odd things applicants do, then you might not recognize that something you’re doing as an applicant is odd or gives a signal that you don’t intend. You might even be so focused on doing the right thing that you miss an obvious opportunity that a more savvy interviewee would not. In short, we’re going to talk about some of those things.

3) What keeps bringing you back to AWP? Is attendance a necessity for members of academia?

I’ve missed it only twice in the past 20 years, and both of those were due to scheduling and budget. I wouldn’t say it’s a necessity, but it’s certainly an opportunity to reconnect with the profession through its people and its publishing. It’s an opportunity to become excited about new trends and new writing. You come back energized, and you often make new connections. Sometimes it’s merely validating. You see your own program directorial dilemmas in other program directors, or you hear about some of the same challenges in writing or publishing or teaching. It’s valuable to share information and gain perspective.

Amy Sage Webb (Associate Faculty/Pedagogy Specialist) earned her M.F.A. in fiction from Arizona State University. As a specialist in creative writing pedagogy, she has served as Director of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ pedagogy forums, and as editor of the national pedagogy papers. She is a contributing author to Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Poetry and Fiction (Prentice Hall 2001 and 2004) and to Power and Identity: The Authority Project (Multilingual Matters, 2006). Her creative work appears most recently in Fourth River Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and Eclipse. She directs the Creative Writing program at Emporia State University, where she teaches introductory creative writing, fiction writing, special topics and studies in creative writing, and literary editing. She currently serves as managing editor of Bluestem Press and Flint Hills Review, and serves on the boards of Woodley Memorial Press and the Kansas Arts Commission. She recently completed her first collection of short fiction, Save Your Own Life. Antioch University faculty page Emporia State University faculty page