8 March 2026

All Things AWP . . .

Reader,

Anticipations

After last summer's CEX conference, one designed mostly around podcasting and other content creation and entrepreneurs, I was ready instead for a meeting of authors, people more dedicated to the craft of writing than the hustle of "selling" and lead magnets and engagement statistics. Yeah, I learned things there, and yes, I even left with the idea for my next book (Frictional Reading), but they weren't "my people."

But authors, educators, small presses? Let me in! And the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Baltimore---with more than 11,000 attendees---seemed like the thing. Networking! Inspiration! Building writing relationships! Find new partnerships! Created the membership, booked the hotel, registered for the conference, and drove for two days to get there.

Day 0: Registration and Reception

Smooth registration at the conference center three blocks from the hotel. The Marriott, somewhat rundown with several broken or missing parts to my room, I soon discovered has been foreclosed upon--of course, there would be no effort to repair or resolve building defects. . . .

But the opening conference and awards reception, which I imagined would be held at a ballroom, was instead about 60 people at the back of a restaurant, fairly tightly-knit insiders who seemed attuned to their company business. We'll start fresh in the morning, then.

Day 1: Dishearteningly Crossed Agendas

Now, as a teacher, I can say that I have attended (and presented at and operated) more conferences than is my fair share. But I did anticipate panels and discussions powerful, avant-garde, cutting edge, thoughtful. Instead, most of the sessions this day were more self-aggrandizing, with folks from literary magazines and university writers instead offering their mini-memoirs and confessions under over-hyped session titles. "Editing for Community and Change" was four stories about magazines which sometimes gave to local charities. "Solidarity During Intellectual Suppression" was anecdotes from campus protests and choices professors made.

Better was a session of autotheory readings, a form/genre which combines critical theory and the fleshly author's life. While the first two sessions left no ideas or strategic takeaways, these readers offered (often sexually explicit) takes on their own studies and writing.

• Recommended for humor through his medieval studies, check out A. W. Strouse's Form and Foreskin or The Gentrified City of God.
• Recommended for reflective movement: Valerie Witte's A Rupture in the Interiors and One Thing Follows Another.

Other sessions I wanted to catch (A Book-branding clinic and Writing the Other) were very poorly scheduled into rooms far too small for the crowds that rushed the rooms. Missed these (while paid sponsors received ballroom-sized live-streamed spaces for sessions of lower attendance.)

So I went down to the enormous bookfair, over 800 exhibitors of MFA programs, journals, small presses, various gimmicky courses, and various associations. I walked every enormous row to size up what was there in order to strategize my time here later. But I did meet:

• The MacGuffin magazine from Michigan, one I helped build in its formative years in the early 1980s, now grown strong and more popular. Great reunion and talk, the spirit of the journal still vital and personal. Recommended place to submit most any form of writing!
• Chill Subs web submission portal. I pushed on them some to wonder why they didn't challenge groups like Submittable. I can only say here that Chill Subs knows the market and knows its niche. Also (shhh!) they will soon open their list to writer organizations!

Most publishers here were dedicated to selling books and were only politely open to questions regarding submissions. Hmm.

And also who wasn't there: ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Writers, and Lulu, a self-publishing platform. Was . . . Was AWP anti-self-publishing? If so, why?

Day 2: Changing the Strategy

So I had to stop trying to gain from the panels and instead try to weigh in as a resource or peer. When a session on marketing gave such advice as "Use social media" and "Get a publicist for around $8000," I kept my irritation submerged and raised my strategy for a YouTube Launch party which was basically free and still had material I could reuse for months afterward. And when another on Book Promotion Channels offered lines like "just do it," "experiment," and falsely claiming that Kirkus had free reviews for freelance writers, I suggested to several attending that ALLi had tons of free resources that were already vetted and had still more for a small paid membership. They had never heard of ALLi. And why? Because they were caught in the traditional publishing rut that AWP almost exclusively talked about.

Good deeds done, I returned to the bookfair to see what I could learn about AWP. And, of course, when I approached the publishers more as peer than petitioner, the stories and agendas emerged more plainly:

• AWP is a corporate entity, profit-driven
• The exhibitor booths are extraordinarily expensive and so turn away the most struggling presses
• One booth, Asterism, is a publisher working to index and link dozens of very small presses to combine their resources; perhaps this explains why two different presented muttered derogatory comments about Asterism during panels.
• Several authors/businesses were boycotting AWP for its anti-free speech policies, prohibiting any gatherings such as vigils or silent protests.
• Self-publishing was a pathway "downplayed" as an option because it earned no profits for other businesses there.

Some good talks about books and authors stepping up with great titles (picked up a few), and also attended a session with three great literary podcasts to check out:

• Blackbird Literary podcast by Trey Burnhart
• A number of programs from Ursa Story Company and Dawnie Walton
• Pure Ghost Radio (paid) by Carvell Wallace

And finally, a small but refreshing conversation with the K-12 Creative Writing teacher caucus, a loose group across the states and from various types of schools. We're starting a small creative writing teacher email-list to share resources. If you are interested in being included, let me know!

And so Day 3: Digging In and At

Since caucuses and networks seemed most important to me, I spend the entire morning with LitNet and Americans for the Arts. Besides the number of consortiums and presses and writing programs represented here, also in attendance were the former head of NEA, the former policy director of NEH, and others. Lots of talk about strains on having to "whitewash" grant applications and loss of funding, lots of laments about the inability to wrestle interest in literacy.

But no discussion on critical literacy, critical thinking, literacy and its connection to democratic agency and activism. How was this possible. Certainly--thinking Frictional Reading--they saw this as a critical foundation that touched all of their work? Not explicitly, it seemed. Not in terms of action-taking, praxis.

Time for discussions. And while the morning ran out, it seems likely I will join both organizations to see what I can offer, what questions I can forward across national policy-lobbies, with conversations being formed for this post-presidential term. (And, fortunately, outside of a few cases, Dems and Repubs in Congress all seem to agree that arts funding should largely continue.)

I avoided or left panels that continued the self-aggrandizing and empty advice (three), and loved a panel of four writers who found hybrid-genre as a tool to reach readers through one of three emotions: works that "stun, unsettle, or compel:" If these are not operating for both writer and reader, the work fails. Interesting . . .

The rest of the time was approaching bookfair exhibitors forthrightly, sometimes cross-examining them on their understanding of cross-genre writing, on literary fiction vs. quick-selling "crazy writing," on how what they offered was better than self-publishing. Happy to report that several small presses were more than ready to engage the more craft-centered dialogue: Siglio, Red Hen, New Directions, Dzanc, Game Over, and Nightboat all have editors who truly know their authors and the more complex dimensions of craft and form.

I, uh, bought a lot of books from them. One publisher said to me, "What's the definition of Literary Fiction? Books that don't sell." I wonder who the joke is on, there, but I wonder more if I hadn't been talking about them anxiously at the morning's LitNet meeting. Who's responsible for this increasingly ugly machine of traditional publishing?

Conclusions

So I don't think I will return to AWP unless it somehow finds its way to Detroit, perhaps. Frankly, the "return on investment" is in no way valuable. Most everything I gained (outside of the specific networking) could have been better acquired through online resources and in so doing better supported both me and those I consulted.

If you are attending AWP as a group of four or more with the idea of a writer's party retreat, with perhaps less interest in retaining information from panels or an inability to consult a company's online catalog for books, then this is the conference for you. Will you become a better writer? A better marketer? A better strategist for your work? No.

Might you meet a few of your fan favorites? Maybe . . . .

Every experience is a learning experience, yes? And I've run out of money for another conference in 2026. So maybe there's something better out there. Do you have ideas? Let me know!

Steve

What's Still Ahead?

• How I Read
• More excerpts from The Unwoven Teaching Guide
• Why friction?
• Reflection: Muses or Misconceptions

​​​ ​​​​ ​Podcasts​ ​Fiction & Verse​ ​Education​ Copyright (C) 2025 Waywords Studio LLC. All rights reserved. Thank you for being part of our growing community!

​