Hey again!
So now I’m at a cafe in Silverlake, drinking the queer middle-aged special (half-caf flat white with oatmilk) & watching everybody type away at their screenplays. Hard to believe there’s a hostile government takeover what with all this jasmine & sunlight.
I’m in Los Angeles for the AWP, the annual writers conference where 35,000 introverts descend on a different city every year. It’s very fun, if you like awkwardness, poetry, totebags, and literary gossip deeply serious panels about pedagogy, which I do.
If you want to see me, I’m on a Center for Fiction panel on Thursday with three of my all-time favorite writers — Kazim Ali, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, & Henry Hoke — but otherwise I’m just here to watch.
I thought I’d hype a few panels & offsite events (in case you’re in LA), most of which I plan to attend if I figure out how to get from point A to point B in the alloted time. Ha. There are approximately one million other exciting events happening, so AWP is also mind training for resisting FOMO.
Wednesday
7-10pm - Nightboat’s 20th Anniversary! (offsite)
7-9pm - Lit & Leather (offsite)
Thursday
10:30am - Hybrid Selves, Hybrid Form: Queer & Feminist Possibilities of the Prose Poem (panel)
12:10pm - Big & Bodied: Writing Against Fatphobia (panel)
1:45–3:00pm - Queering Form, or Weird Fiction (panel)
6:00 – 7:30pm - Horny Queer Poets (offsite)
Friday
12:10pm - Ecopoetics in a Time of Grief: Queer & Trans Perspectives (panel)
1:45pm - From Prose to Screen & Back Again (panel)
6pm - Trans Horror Reading (offsite)
Saturday
1:45pm - Criminalized Lit (panel)
7 -9pm - Little Puss reading & party (offsite)
Okay! That’s my current plan. Who knows what will actually happen. I hope to cross paths!
Sending love to you & yours,
AL
Would you say Horny Queer Poets is the anticipated highlight of your week?
Wonderful to read this update. Hope you will enjoy the better weather out there. Indeed the Dems do need $ and new ideas.