How to Survive Without AWP

If you’ve glanced at Facebook recently, you of course noticed that everyone is at AWP. Almost everyone is there, except you and me.

There are the old standbys of depression we could lean on: many cups of hard stuff in the evening, hourly guzzles of whipped cream from the can, an 86-mile bike ride fueled by resentment, a three-day-long nap in the same orange pajamas.

All because everyone else is going to AWP.

We imagine them landing their book deals, hugging famous authors, gathering wagon-fulls of gorgeous signed books. Huge advances are being handed out left and right.

Yes, they are networking, they are gathering info, they are scouting, they are meeting, they are greeting, they even might be writing.

Put that whipped cream can back in the fridge. We, the non-AWP-goers, the chosen few, can band together in solidarity and support one another.  I cry out: there is no reason to shrivel in the face of a literary party. We’re still cool.

While those sneeches schmooze, flaunt their new outfits bought to strut down the lit mag aisle, toast with fellow authors, sidle up to presses, we who are unable to attend stay home, keeping the cogs of prose and poetry churning.

Whether it be that we stay home because of introversion, lack of funds, children, large laundry pile, bundt cake in the oven, excitement over the new and genius-like Los Angeles Review issue, no matter. We’re hip. We’re the reclusive writers they talk about, the hermits everyone envies, the brilliant writers sparkling-up that next Pulitzer. Stand tall and proud, I say.

Stefanie Freele, Fiction Editor