Yay, AWP!

It's AWP time! Tomorrow Ron, Graham, and all of us interns are piling into a van (can we fit all that luggage?) and driving to Chicago. I am so excited! Things are kind of crazy in the office right now as we all try to get last minute projects rolling and ready for the conference. I think I'm finished with everything I needed to do (save this blog) and now it's time to pack. Lightly, of course. No trash bags full of shoes this year. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I'm a little nervous about volunteering to help out with registration, but it's only a few hours of my time and it's well worth the waived registration fee that comes along with it.

I want to attend the following sessions in addition to the book fair:

R132. Multi-Genre Mentorship.

R154. Bob Hope, Joey Ramone, the Wolf Man, and Me: The Use of Pop Culture in Fiction.

R187. This is the Midwest? Landscape in Narrative.*

F138. The Duty of a Writer.

S117. Rising from the Cornfields: (Re)vising the Midwest. *

S143. Midwest Confidential. *

S173. The Steady Gaze: Writing Frankly about Sex and Sexuality in Fiction.

AND most importantly:

S193. Twenty Years in Utopia: The RopeWalk Writers Retreat Aniversary Reading. **


Sidenote: This conference coincides with the official opening of response season for MFA applicants, however, and I will be away from my mailbox, email, and I can't really answer my cell phone while working or watching a presentation. It's very frustrating. Also, many of the programs I applied to will have booths at the conference and it will be very hard for me to walk nonchalantly by and refrain from shaking the collar of the poor sap manning the thing, demanding acceptance into the program. Oh well. It will be easier to see and visit these booths still believing I have a shot at getting in than it would be to see them knowing I'd been rejected.



* I seem to be drawn to these Midwest writing sessions.
** If any of you are going to be there, please attend our session! It's sure to be amazing.