A look back at AWP ’10

LAR’s poetry, nonfiction, reviews, and translations contingent is back from a busy few days in Denver. We’re loaded down with newly acquired books and journals, business cards, book fair swag, and a sleep debt to rival the national deficit. As this was my first time attending an AWP conference, I hope you’ll indulge me with a bit of reflection on the experience. I met a number of wonderful, kind writers and editors, and yet the strangeness of the entire AWP enterprise gave the event a sense of good old Heideggerrian thrownness.

There were the editors and interns schlepping boxes of books around downtown Denver and hobbling along in shoes that most certainly weren’t designed for manual labor, the kiosk selling turkey legs (simultaneously nauseating and hunger-inducing) adjacent to a sparsely populated book-signing table, a couple of panels in which Q&A sessions quickly turned into holdings-forth by attendees with axes to grind, and, of course, a certain glazed-eyed weariness on nearly everyone’s face. At some point on the second day of the conference, I took a break from the Los Angeles Review’s table and wandered around the endless aisles of book fair tables in a semi-comatose state. Looking around at the teeming masses of writers, books and magazines filling the hall, I thought, this is all deeply strange. What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?

Later that day, back at the LAR table, I remembered just what we were here to do when my fellow editors and I got to meet contributor after contributor, and to create human, personal connections with our writers and readers. As editors, we bond with the work we accept. We read our pieces over and over; we read to select, to edit, to order a manuscript, to proofread, and often just to revel in the great writing we want to present to our readers. When we finally have the chance to meet and connect personally with our literary community—to enjoy those whose work we love and those whom we serve—we remember why we run a journal in the first place: we believe in the written word, and the importance of literature. We believe writers need venues for their voices to be heard, and that readers deserve the highest quality in literature. In brief, we believe in you, writers and readers. Thanks for believing in us, too.

Kelly Davio, Managing Editor