AWP 16 Recap

AWP 2016 in LA was a smashing success! There's been such a positive response in the aftermath of the Poetry of Comics panel—so many people reaching out just to express their excitement for this genre they didn't know existed. This, obviously, makes glitter cannons go off in my heart.

If you didn't get to go, but want to pretend like you did, the Seattle Review of Books published a nice little write up about it.

I also had a fabulous time hanging out at the Broadsided Press table (watching people geek out over the View Masters was particularly enjoyable) and the Seattle Review table (selling Adrienne Raphel's chapbook BUT WHAT WILL WE DO, hot off the press from Paper Hammer). I always love meeting contributors and talking about these publications I believe in.

I only made it to one other panel besides my own, but it was phenomenal. Jonah Webster, Patricia Smith, Justin Reed, and Susan Somers-Willett DESTROYED ME with their poems at the Black Bodies Matter panel—so rawly performed, expertly wound, and bitingly affixed to this contemporary moment in America. I left that room emotionally drained yet full of excitement for these poets who are bringing every tool at their disposal to the writing of anti-racist poems.

On the last night of AWP, I got to have a swanky dinner with three lady poets who are basically my idols: Camille Dungy, Keetje Kuipers, and Susan Somers-Willett. We shared the most delicious Brussels sprouts in the world, and that, my friends, is what you call a happy ending.