I went to the conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) in Minnesota—first time in that state!—this past weekend. I'd say this about sums it up:
![awp]( "awp")
I was actually on that Blue Line streetcar when the accident happened. Literally didn't feel a thing, though obviously the car was smashed and the person in the passenger seat had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
AWP is a weird hustle, just like a fat guy nearly killing himself against the nosecone of a Mall of America bus is. There are essentially two tracks in the American writing life—the academic track, which is state-subsidized, and the commercial track, which is dominated by several large corporations. Of course, this means that American letters is largely a useless mess. Even forgetting the connection between the CIA and MFA programs , the art of the state is the art of the middle class: neuroses, a false choice between propaganda ("realism") and nonsense ("postmodernism") and an utterly paternalistic relationship to money. More than one conversation about paying writers (my Storify on submission fees was widely discussed) ended with someone stating, definitively, "Grants!" We dare not cultivate the idea that either a. some fraction of readers might wish to pay for writing or even b. if writing and publishing is an expensive hobby, that it should simply be a slightly more expensive one and writers paid.
I got this button at AWP:
![CCPZYDkUAAAKyrk]( "CCPZYDkUAAAKyrk")
A good sentiment that turned horrifying once the editor of the journal explained that they charge SIX DOLLARS to submit a piece, for the chance to be published and then paid. (Imagine pinning a $5 to every resume you send out when seeking a job.) But, for AWP, they were halving the cost to only $3. Every issue also comes with a "transparency index" to explain where the money goes—and yet, how much is a table, hotel, etc. at AWP? Easily a couple grand, and whatever few copies the journal sold wouldn't have put a dent in those costs.
Or, let's put it another way: I had my plane ticket booked paid for, and my AWP membership and hotel reimbursed by WestConn, where I teach. I was sent because WestConn's MFA program is launching a journal, Poor Yorick, and the rule is that is students travel on the college's (and state of Connecticut's) dime, a faculty member must attend, and I was asked to go. Journals table at AWP primarily to cultivate a pool of submitters, which may sound strange to those in Real Publishing, where the main issue is burdensome slush piles of submissions. So, WestConn was happy, or at least willing, to spend thousands on a table, a few plane tickets, and hotel rooms...and Poor Yorick is as of yet a non-paying venue. I sat down with the students and came up with a budget: we could buy a year's content at $100 per story or essay, $25 per poem, $50 per photo, and $300 per video for just around $2000. We'll be doing an Indiegogo to make this happen soon...or we could have just stayed home and writers would be beating a path to our door for the sake of a C-note. But the college won't pay for non-college contributors...
Despite the commitment to producing material nobody reads, AWP is a celebrity culture and the famous writers get all the attention. T.C. Boyle read a new story before a full house, "The Five Pound Burrito" that meandered into a wild, interesting fantasy, before being drawn back in by an ending that denied all the implications of the mimesis of the story. It was the sort of thing I rejected at Clarkesworld all the time. If your story is going to go crazy, it has to stay crazy, at least. When asked by a nervous audience member how such a story would be classified, Boyle said something like "As a story that'll make me some money." One could almost smell the synapses melting. And yet, the lines for Boyle and the other major writers, the ones who don't have to pay submissions fees or depend on grants to feel like writers, were the longest. Even among poets, there was a clear demarcation between those who won contests with small presses, and those published by somewhat larger publishers (WW Norton, etc.)
And yet...have you seen the state of commercial fiction lately? Oh dear, I'm sure anyone reading this has already Googled "Sad Puppies", or doesn't need to. One reason I've stopped attending most SF conventions is to get away from weekends with writers where none of them ever speak of writing. (Publishing is not writing.) One bright spot at AWP were the Bizarro-themed offsite events. I went to readings every night, and loved the Bizarro and post-Bizarro* stuff for its verve and its professionalism. Instead of endless muttering into microphones and giggling excuses and endless recitations of poems about alcohol and vaginas and the leaves on the wind—I made the mistake of going to a restaurant where between two events over thirty people read as long as they liked and as poorly as they could—the performances were short, fun, diverse, and sometimes extremely raunchy without ever being malevolent or hateful, and the writers and readers were excited. This is just a step over micropress stuff, but the audience has been found, cultivated, and is happy to pay for these strange little books. Some bizarro titles sell a couple hundred copies, some sell around 10,000 copies, and it seems to be working without either devolving into academic writing or diluting into popular writing.
As far as me...well, I was both in place and out of place at every event. I went to a meeting regarding founding a journal about creative writing instruction, and was the only MFA faculty member there, and I'm only an adjunct doing it as a lark. A lot of what I experienced at the readings, I could just not take seriously. People would come up to the Poor Yorick desk and either a. get excited "because Shakespeare" as the kids on the Internet say, or b. skulk about, looking for submission guidelines. One kid didn't even know the phrase "poor Yorick"! (Grad students in writing, mind you.) I got to meet a few people, including![]()
jtglover, who turned me on to the new-to-me Nelly Arcan. I got a free lunch from Brooke Wonders, who wrote down stuff that I said, which is a very strange experience!
That's AWP.
*Post-bizarro because as bizarro leaks into alt.lit and crime fiction respectively, they are finding new aesthetics. Plus, as the original bizarros age and do things like get married and have kids, the dumb-ass goofiness is giving way to a more thoughtful surrealism. Barton Fink or Blue Velvet rather than Surf Nazis Must Die.
I was actually on that Blue Line streetcar when the accident happened. Literally didn't feel a thing, though obviously the car was smashed and the person in the passenger seat had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
AWP is a weird hustle, just like a fat guy nearly killing himself against the nosecone of a Mall of America bus is. There are essentially two tracks in the American writing life—the academic track, which is state-subsidized, and the commercial track, which is dominated by several large corporations. Of course, this means that American letters is largely a useless mess. Even forgetting the connection between the CIA and MFA programs , the art of the state is the art of the middle class: neuroses, a false choice between propaganda ("realism") and nonsense ("postmodernism") and an utterly paternalistic relationship to money. More than one conversation about paying writers (my Storify on submission fees was widely discussed) ended with someone stating, definitively, "Grants!" We dare not cultivate the idea that either a. some fraction of readers might wish to pay for writing or even b. if writing and publishing is an expensive hobby, that it should simply be a slightly more expensive one and writers paid.
I got this button at AWP:
A good sentiment that turned horrifying once the editor of the journal explained that they charge SIX DOLLARS to submit a piece, for the chance to be published and then paid. (Imagine pinning a $5 to every resume you send out when seeking a job.) But, for AWP, they were halving the cost to only $3. Every issue also comes with a "transparency index" to explain where the money goes—and yet, how much is a table, hotel, etc. at AWP? Easily a couple grand, and whatever few copies the journal sold wouldn't have put a dent in those costs.
Or, let's put it another way: I had my plane ticket booked paid for, and my AWP membership and hotel reimbursed by WestConn, where I teach. I was sent because WestConn's MFA program is launching a journal, Poor Yorick, and the rule is that is students travel on the college's (and state of Connecticut's) dime, a faculty member must attend, and I was asked to go. Journals table at AWP primarily to cultivate a pool of submitters, which may sound strange to those in Real Publishing, where the main issue is burdensome slush piles of submissions. So, WestConn was happy, or at least willing, to spend thousands on a table, a few plane tickets, and hotel rooms...and Poor Yorick is as of yet a non-paying venue. I sat down with the students and came up with a budget: we could buy a year's content at $100 per story or essay, $25 per poem, $50 per photo, and $300 per video for just around $2000. We'll be doing an Indiegogo to make this happen soon...or we could have just stayed home and writers would be beating a path to our door for the sake of a C-note. But the college won't pay for non-college contributors...
Despite the commitment to producing material nobody reads, AWP is a celebrity culture and the famous writers get all the attention. T.C. Boyle read a new story before a full house, "The Five Pound Burrito" that meandered into a wild, interesting fantasy, before being drawn back in by an ending that denied all the implications of the mimesis of the story. It was the sort of thing I rejected at Clarkesworld all the time. If your story is going to go crazy, it has to stay crazy, at least. When asked by a nervous audience member how such a story would be classified, Boyle said something like "As a story that'll make me some money." One could almost smell the synapses melting. And yet, the lines for Boyle and the other major writers, the ones who don't have to pay submissions fees or depend on grants to feel like writers, were the longest. Even among poets, there was a clear demarcation between those who won contests with small presses, and those published by somewhat larger publishers (WW Norton, etc.)
And yet...have you seen the state of commercial fiction lately? Oh dear, I'm sure anyone reading this has already Googled "Sad Puppies", or doesn't need to. One reason I've stopped attending most SF conventions is to get away from weekends with writers where none of them ever speak of writing. (Publishing is not writing.) One bright spot at AWP were the Bizarro-themed offsite events. I went to readings every night, and loved the Bizarro and post-Bizarro* stuff for its verve and its professionalism. Instead of endless muttering into microphones and giggling excuses and endless recitations of poems about alcohol and vaginas and the leaves on the wind—I made the mistake of going to a restaurant where between two events over thirty people read as long as they liked and as poorly as they could—the performances were short, fun, diverse, and sometimes extremely raunchy without ever being malevolent or hateful, and the writers and readers were excited. This is just a step over micropress stuff, but the audience has been found, cultivated, and is happy to pay for these strange little books. Some bizarro titles sell a couple hundred copies, some sell around 10,000 copies, and it seems to be working without either devolving into academic writing or diluting into popular writing.
As far as me...well, I was both in place and out of place at every event. I went to a meeting regarding founding a journal about creative writing instruction, and was the only MFA faculty member there, and I'm only an adjunct doing it as a lark. A lot of what I experienced at the readings, I could just not take seriously. People would come up to the Poor Yorick desk and either a. get excited "because Shakespeare" as the kids on the Internet say, or b. skulk about, looking for submission guidelines. One kid didn't even know the phrase "poor Yorick"! (Grad students in writing, mind you.) I got to meet a few people, including
jtglover, who turned me on to the new-to-me Nelly Arcan. I got a free lunch from Brooke Wonders, who wrote down stuff that I said, which is a very strange experience! That's AWP.
*Post-bizarro because as bizarro leaks into alt.lit and crime fiction respectively, they are finding new aesthetics. Plus, as the original bizarros age and do things like get married and have kids, the dumb-ass goofiness is giving way to a more thoughtful surrealism. Barton Fink or Blue Velvet rather than Surf Nazis Must Die.