I'm going to AWP!

Looking Down on the World's Fair, 1893

This year I'll be attending the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Annual Conference for the first time. The AWP conference is the big literary conference. Margaret Atwood will be giving a keynote address, there'll be three days full of panels on writing and teaching writing, and a mammoth book fair.

But what I'm most excited about is seeing my friends. It will be the first time I've seen my MFA friend Ashley Cowger in several years. And I'm going to get to see Clarion West classmate Maria Romasco-Moore, too. In fact, the only reason I'm going to be able to attend is because of the support and encouragement of these friends.

The passes for AWP are completely sold out this year. Usually, they offer at the door memberships. I was one of the lucky people who bought one of the last 200 tickets when they went on sale. They sold out in 8 minutes.

Here are a few of the panels I'm looking forward to attending:

• A Writing Life, After the Workshop 
• The Long and Short of It: Navigating the Transitions between Writing Novels and Short Stories
• Selling Out Everyone You Love: The Ethics of Writing Nonfiction
• Villains and Killers and Criminals, Oh My: Representing Evildoers in Literary Fiction
• Beyond Pulp - The Futuristic and Fantastic as Literary Fiction
• NPRU Kidding Me? It Can Totally Happen
• The Image, Written: Using Photography and Mixed Media to Teach Creative and Composition Writing
• Pleasures and Perils of Drawing Fiction from Life

I'll be tweeting from AWP and I'll blog about the experience when I get back. The conference will be at the beginning of March, but I'm already getting excited and packing my suitcase. I can't wait to reunite with my writing friends, and to spend a few days immersed in a world where writing is what matters most. 

And I'm excited to go to Chicago for the first time, and to daydream about the White City of the World's Fair.