THURSDAY, February 3
9:00 AM
Thurgood Marshall West Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | R111. Courting Risk: A Multicultural/Multi-Genre Reading. (Khadijah Queen, Natalie Diaz, Naomi Benaron, L. Lamar Wilson, Susan Southard, Ariel Robello) Courting Risk is an annual reading series which promotes the work of emerging writers, particularly those who are women, LGBT, and/or of color. Focus is given also to writers who address difficult political or social issues in multiple genres and art forms. A brief introduction of the series will be followed by a reading from six powerful emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and cross-genre work, with time allotted at the end for Q&A. |
10:30 AM Thurgood Marshall East Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | R130. Memoir and Latinidad. (Joy Castro, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Luis Rodriguez, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Rigoberto González) U.S. Latina/o memoir has developed a rich contemporary tradition that spans the political and stylistic spectrum from Richard Rodriguez to Gloria Anzaldúa. But what makes a memoir Latina/o? Does latinidad influence aesthetics and craft as well as content? Do Latina/o memoirists see themselves as inheriting the life-writing techniques and traditions of the U.S., Latin America, or both? How do writers navigate mainstream expectations that their memoirs will represent whole cultures and nations? |
Palladian Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby | R163. Trading Stories with the Enemy: Navigating the Cuban/American Literary Landscape. (Patricia Ann McNair, Ruth Behar, Kristin Dykstra, Achy Obejas) The relationship between the U.S. and Cuba is complex and ever-evolving, and this evolution is reflected in the stories and publications of Cubans and Cuban-Americans. While the two governments grapple with politics and policies, writers and editors continue to cross borders and boundaries in order to collect and share these stories. Our panelists have been actively engaged in this process for years, and will speak about the challenges and rewards of this work. |
Executive Room
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby | R184. A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line. (Emily Rosko, Raza Ali Hasan, Evie Shockley, John Gallaher, Emmy Pérez, Robyn Schiff) So much in poetry depends upon the line—one of the most contested and central topics in 20th century poetics. This panel extends the discussion of this poetic fixture into the 21st-century. The concept of the line so often emerges as a kind of poetic and critical blank check—an aesthetic, sociopolitical, and metaphysical variable. Embracing this variability, the panelists will discuss how the line remains a crucial and generative force in their poetic work and thought. |
Regency Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby | R209. A Reading by John Phillip Santos & Lorraine Lopez, Sponsored by the Macondo Writers’ Workshop. (John Phillip Santos, Lorraine Lopez) National Book Award finalist John Phillip Santos and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist Lorraine Lopez read from their work. Both are members of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop in San Antonio, TX. |
Thurgood Marshall West Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | R220. Spanish American Poetry in Translation: from Post-Avant-garde to Postmodernism. (Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, Forrest Gander, Katherine Hedeen, Gary Racz, Michelle Gil-Montero) In Spanish America, the terms Avant-garde and Modernism connote approaches to poetry remarkably distinct from what those terms generally mean to North Americans. And yet these approaches define the major literary works of a continent. This panel highlights the shift from Post-Avant-garde to Postmodernism, celebrating the last 60 years of Spanish American poetry and introducing some of the region’s best poets, read and commented on by their translators. |
Hampton Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby | R229. The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World. (Lauret Savoy, Elmaz Abinader, Faith Adiele, Fred Arroyo, Debra Kang Dean, Nikky Finney) A segregation of ideas continues in this country such that both the environmental movement and nature writing do not yet recognize the many voices of people not of Anglo-American descent. Join contributors to the unique new anthology The Colors of Nature—African-, Asian-, and Arab-American, Latino/a, Native, and multi-racial writers—who redefine nature and nature writing, enlarge our understanding of the human place on Earth, and offer fresh ways of considering multicultural literature. |
5:00PM- 7:00PM | 6th Annual Con Tinta Celebration (Off-Site) Location: Alero Restaurant/Lounge Cost: No charge Description: Con Tinta: Chicano/Latino Writers' Collective annual celebration for its Advisory Circle, Literary Communities, and Allies. Features a free buffet, cash bar, and presentation of Achievement Award. This year's recipient is Helena Maria Viramontes for her work as an author, educator, and activist. |
8:30 PM
Marriott Ballroom
Marriott Wardman Park, Lobby Level | R232. Keynote Address by Jhumpa Lahiri, Sponsored by George Mason University. (Jhumpa Lahiri) Jhumpa Lahiri received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection that explores issues of love and identity among immigrants and cultural transplants. Published to great acclaim in 2003, Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, expands on the perplexities of the immigrant experience and the search for identity. Lahiri’s most recent book of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, received the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Vallombrosa Von Rezzori Prize, and the Asian American Literary Award. Lahiri is also the recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award, an O. Henry Prize, and the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has received grants from the Guggenheim Fellowship and The National Endowment for the Arts. |
FRIDAY, February 4
9:00 AM
Thurgood Marshall South Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | F111. Race in the Creative Writing Workshop. (Cynthia Cruz, Michelle Y. Valladares, J. Michael Martinez, Suzanne Gardinier, Saeed Jones, Carolina Ebeid) When teaching in writing workshops, what allowances ought to be made for the artists, individually, and where do we draw the line? At what point do stereotypes of race get addressed? How does it feel to be the lone writer of color in a college writing workshop? What balance and/or added perspective can a teacher bring to the workshop experience? When does “teaching one's race” begin to interfere with one’s own opportunity to discuss craft? |
Thurgood Marshall West Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | F112. Written Across Waters. (Patrick Rosal, Elana Bell, Aracelis Girmay, David Wright, Curtis Bauer, Tyehimba Jess) Five award-winning American writers, who have spent extensive time abroad in Africa, South America, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, explore how various places overseas first called to them, how they made their travels possible, and how looking home across natural and political borders has affected their writing. Each writer will address funding opportunities and challenges, as well as the particular urgency and personal responsibility of being an American writer in an international context. |
Thurgood Marshall North Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | F129. One Poem Festival Celebrating Rane Arroyo. (Glenn Sheldon) A diverse selection of fellow writers, friends, and former students each perform a poem by—or about—poet, playwright, and professor, Rane Arroyo, to celebrate his life and work. The session will open with an invocation by Francisco X Alarcon and an introduction by Glenn Sheldon. |
Thurgood Marshall West Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | F131. Metafiction Latino: Beyond Magical Realism. (Daniel Olivas, Kathleen Alcalá, Xánath Caraza, Susana Chávez-Silverman, Salvador Plascencia) The novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, is the seminal work of magical realism that has cast a long—and sometimes constraining—shadow over Latino writers. Yet metafiction, (which acknowledges the reader’s role in literature and often breaks the wall between fiction and memoir) has emerged from this shadow to stand on its own. The panelists will share their own works of metafiction and discuss its role in contemporary Latino literature. |
Empire Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby | R141. From the Home Front: Civilian Poets Writing on War. (Juan J. Morales, Raza Ali Hasan, Laren McClung, Maria Melendez, Faisal Siddiqui, Solmaz Sharif) Six poets from different walks of life will read and discuss how warfare enters their daily lives and how they navigate their roles as writers, witnesses, the relatives of veterans, and civilians. They will discuss the complications of taking a stance, the daily life of combat zones, the plight of the refugee, PTSD, and the longing for peace, all while reflecting on how poems depicting recent and past wars help them better scrutinize present representations of warfare composed on the home front. |
12 noon
Thurgood Marshall West Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | F152. Reverent Irreverence: Women Writing Spirituality. (Lorraine Lopez, Heather Sellers, Kathryn Locey, Meredith Gray, Joy Castro) Academics often shrink from matters of faith, a sensitive topic even without considering gender politics, particularly male hierarchies, and representations of the divine in organized religion. So where does this leave the female writer eager to explore incongruities that erupt between the impulse to create and faith systems that contradict her agency? What if she explores faith fault lines through humor? This panel of writers explores faith and spirituality—irreverently—through personal essay. |
Palladian Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby | F162. Raúl Zurita, a Reading and Conversation. (Daniel Borzutzky, Raúl Zurita, Mónica de la Torre, Joyelle McSweeney) Come out and hear a dual-language reading by Raúl Zurita, a poet whose ferociously visionary politics and relentlessly inventive poetics have made him one of the most important contemporary Latin American poets. Among other works, Zurita will read from Song for his Disappeared Love, an elegy for youth lost to the Pinochet regime and a re-imagining of the entire Latin American landmass on a visionary scale. CD Wright has praised Zurita’s work for “push[ing] back against the ugly vapidity of rule by force.” The reading will be followed by a conversation with Zurita featuring Daniel Borzutzky, Mónica de la Torre, and Joyelle McSweeney. |
Thurgood Marshall East Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | F170. Camino del Sol: 15 Years of Latina and Latino Writing. (Rigoberto González, Marjorie Agosin, Kathleen Alcalá, David Dominguez, Gina Franco, Sergio Troncoso) This reading panel is a celebration of the recently-released anthology that gathers the best selections from fifteen years of the University of Arizona Press’s Latino literary series, Camino del Sol. During its tenure, the press published 100 titles, shaping the Latino literary landscape and becoming the most important Latino literary series in the country. |
Regency Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby | F207B. Cisneros and Viramontes Uncensored: A Conversation with Sandra Cisneros and Helena María Viramontes, Sponsored by the Macondo Writers’ Workshop. (Sandra Cisneros, Helena Maria Viramontes) Two amigas who have known each other for over a quarter of a century reunite to talk about then and now in a conversation about the (very) personal and political. They will say things that they’ve never said before in public or in print. |
4:30 PM
Empire Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby | F224. Poet/Editors on Inclusivity and Race. (Rich Villar, Dan Chiasson, Don Share, Carmen Giménez Smith, Craig Santos Perez, Barbara Jane Reyes) Poet/editors discuss inclusiveness (and lack thereof) of minority voices in literary publications. Representing both mainstream and more community-based projects, the panelists consider the challenges of inclusiveness, and how successful (and unsuccessful) they have been. They consider how, in an atmosphere of perceived mistrust, constructive dialogue can be forged towards the goal of better presenting the broad spectrum of American poetry. |
6: 00PM – 9:00 PM (Off-Site)
FLORICANTO IN DC: A Multicultural Response Reading to SB 1070
Location: True Reformer Building, 1200 U Street NW, Washington, DC
Cost: $5 suggested. No one turned away
Description: Join us as over twenty poets lend their energy and language to a group reading in response to Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and in resistance to the atmosphere of national xenophobia under which the bill (and its emerging counterparts) were created. Confirmed readers include: Francisco X. Alarcón, Tara Betts, Sarah Browning, Regie Cabico, Carmen Catalayud, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Susan Deer Cloud, Martín Espada, Odilia Galvan Rodriguez, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Aracelis Girmay, Randall Horton, Juan Felipe Herrera, Dorianne Laux, Marilyn Nelson, Mark Nowak, Barbara Jane Reyes, Abel Salas, Sonia Sanchez, Craig Santos Perez, Hedy Trevino, Pam Ushuk, Dan Vera, Rich Villar, and Andre Yang. Co-sponsored and presented by the Acentos Foundation, Split This Rock, and the Poets Responding to SB 1070 Facebook group. Hosted by Oscar Bermeo.
7:00 PM – 8: 15 PM
Maryland B
Marriott Wardman Park, Lobby Level | A Reception for the Macondo Writers' Workshop, Hosted by the University of Notre Dame/Letras Latinas. Join the members and faculty from the Macondo Writers’ Workshop for a reception. |
Marriott Ballroom
Marriott Wardman Park, Lobby Level | F228. A Reading by Junot Díaz, Sponsored by Georgia College & State University / Arts & Letters. (Junot Díiaz) Junot Díaz was born in 1968 in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize; the National Book Critics Circle Award; the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. Díaz has been awarded the Eugene McDermott Award, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, a Lila Acheson Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, the 2002 PEN/Malamud Award, the 2003 U.S./Japan Creative Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Rudge (1948), and Nancy Allen Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
SATURDAY, February 5
9:00 AM
Coolidge Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | S103. CantoMundo: Building a Community of Latina/o Poets. (Pablo Miguel Martinez, Deborah Paredez, Emmy Pérez, Cynthia Cruz, Eduardo C. Corral, Celeste Guzman Mendoza) CantoMundo, a master workshop and retreat, strives to cultivate a community of Latina/o poets by providing a culturally-grounded space for the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latina/o poetry. In this session, founders and fellows will reflect on launching the retreat-workshop and will discuss the significance of CantoMundo’s efforts to connect training in craft with a focus on Latina/o aesthetic and social concerns. The session will also feature a reading by panelists-fellows. |
Delaware Suite Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Lobby Level | S104. Poetry of Resistance: Poets Take on Reasonable Suspicion (Arizona SB 1070). (Francisco X. Alarcón, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Odilia Galván-Rodríguez, Scott Maurer, Abel Salas, Hedy Garcia Trevino) In April 2010, in response to a controversial law in Arizona, a Facebook page, Poets Responding to SB 1070, was created. It is now a public forum for lively mixing of poetics and politics. Its poet moderators will discuss the political imagination of multicultural poetic expressions in support of a resurgent Civil Right Movement for comprehensive Immigration Reform. Come and see accomplished poets read some cutting edge poems posted on the FB page as well as from their acclaimed works. |
10:30 AM
Executive Room
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby | S141. Translation/Trans-Latino: Writing Across the Borders. (Daniel Borzutzky, Mónica de la Torre, Valerie Martinez, Urayoán Noel, Lila Zemborain) For many reasons, it has become common to place Spanish-language writing from Latin America in a separate category from English-language U.S. Latino writing. While we recognize the context and importance of this split, this panel seeks to start a new dialogue about writers who skillfully navigate both categories. In the process, we will discuss how a multi-lingual, multi-national “Trans-Latino” vision has shaped our writing, translating, editing, and teaching in productive and challenging ways. 12 noon |
Regency Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby | S165B. The PSA Presents: A Reading and Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera. (Robert N. Casper, Juan Felipe Herrera) National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Juan Felipe Herrera will read his poetry, followed by an interview with Poetry Society of America Programs Director Robert N. Casper. |
Thurgood Marshall South Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | S176. Caribbean Diaspora and Diegesis: Cristina Garcia and Irene Vilar. (Fred Arroyo, Cristina Garcia, Irene Vilar) Cristina Garcia, prizewinning Cuban American novelist and editor of two Vintage Latino literature anthologies, and Irene Vilar, controversial nonfiction writer from Puerto Rico and editor of The Americas book series, combine brief readings from their works and discuss the Latino Caribbean Diaspora as it continues to find expression in new literary narratives. Moderated by Fred Arroyo. |
Marriott Ballroom
Marriott Wardman Park, Lobby Level | S170. Undivided: Poet as Public Citizen, Sponsored by Split This Rock Poetry Festival. (Melissa Tuckey, Toi Derricotte, Martín Espada, Carolyn Forché, Mark Nowak) Split This Rock celebrates poetry of provocation and witness and the role of poet as public citizen. In a time of multiple wars, economic, social, and environmental crises, this panel will discuss the role of poets and poetry in public life. Shelley described the poet as “unacknowledged legislator.” What does this mean in the age of Fox News and corporate lobbyists? What are some of the ways that poets are engaging with the larger public in the United States and abroad? Who are the models for this work? How might we begin to think of ourselves as undivided: both citizen and poet? |
Coolidge Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | S187. Behind the Brown Wall: Chicana and Chicano Voices Rise Up. (Richard Yañez, Eduardo C. Corral, Carolina Monsiváis, Paul Pedroza, Michelle Otero) A reading by authors who declare the U.S.-México Border a part of their creative identity. The poetry, stories, novels, and essays of these respected Chicana and Chicano voices are rooted on both sides of the international boundary. In their publications, the borderlands symbolize a portrait of America’s boundaries more complex than sensationalized headlines of drug smuggling and illegal immigration. Come witness these talented writers and poets who celebrate people more than mere politics. |
4:30 PM
Wilson A, B, & C Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level | S218. LaChiPo and the New Latino Poetics/Politics. (John-Michael Rivera, Rodrigo Toscano, Valerie Martinez, Roberto Tejada, Danielle Cadena Deulen, Carmen Giménez Smith) LaChiPo, an online forum for the Latino Diaspora, is the Latino’s 21st-century answer to “new” movements like flarf and conceptual poetics. Devoted to developing Latino letters, LaChiPo invites AWP attendees to resituate how they read, to relearn how identity is spoken, expanding their articulation of history, art and modernity. LaChiPo presents writers discussing Latino conceptions of internet community, identity and the avant-garde, reading individual and their collective poetry works. |
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