AWP 2013 in Boston

As I was returning on a late-evening, slow train from Boston after attending the annual Associated Writing Programs (AWP), I tried, before briefly falling into a deep sleep--and nearly missing my stop at New York's Penn Station-- whose spell only my iPhone alarm and the conductor's loud yell broke, I tried to remember the first AWP I attended, and I couldn't. The conferences and years and cities blur, though some, like the gathering Baltimore several years back, or Denver's two years ago, marking my first visit ever to that city, or the prior one last decade in New York, or the several in Chicago, one of which I had to miss because of my father's death, remain as alive to me as if I were still there. So too do a few that I could not attend for various reasons, including the AWP conference that took place in Vancouver.  Yet whatever I may feel in the months and weeks leading up to each AWP conference I attend, I always return from them physically exhausted but intellectually and creatively energized, and this year was no exception. I overheard someone saying that by Friday afternoon 12,000 people had attended, a number that may or may not be astonishing and a high, though because of the layout of the Hynes Convention Center and the nearby hotels, this year felt far less frenzied than that maelstrom of last year's conference in Chicago. By the first full day I'd been there I was feeling overwhelmed by the circus-like atmosphere, and was glad that I could head home and revive myself before returning for another day of events.

Snowquestered Boston

The AWP conference also always feels a bit more upbeat than the Modern Language Association (MLA) conferences, perhaps because the literary world, far more so than the scholarly-academic one, still (thankfully!) includes large numbers of non-professionals, lovers and enthusiasts of literature and books,   amateurs and dilettantes and tyros, and this is not a bad thing. AWP, and the American (by which I also include Canada and increasingly the global Anglophone literary sphere), as Mark McGurl and others have persuasively argued, is part of a literary-industrial complex, with an increasingly institutionalized, rationalized, stratified, hyper-commodified hierarchical system of actors, laborers, commodities, but what AWP also makes clear is that anyone who can afford to get into (or can inventively sneak into, at least for the first few days) the panels or readings or Book Fair, for example, can interact with anyone else who's there, and there are always a range of offsite events (readings, performances, musical events, etc.) that attendees accord just as much, and sometimes more value, than anything occurring within the conference itself. In fact, these offsite events often enrich and add considerably more value to your experience of the conference, and both offer a counterbalance and a leveling effect to the increasing dominance of academe. They also demonstrate that although there are numerous gatekeepers in the Anglophone American literary world, powerful publishers, institutions, famous authors and teachers, a history and tradition that must be acknowledged and reckoned with, creative writing at its core, as is the case for all art and art forms, remains fully beyond the grasp of anyone or any institution that would want to reduce it to a mere cog in the wheel of global-American capital, though it is that.

Snowquestered Boston by night

Perhaps it is a question of perspective, but this year's conference also felt more diverse, in the sense of pluralism more so than multiculturalism, than prior ones, and even the briefest perusal of the major official readings shows that the organizers have really made an effort to feature an ever wider array of voices from within the institutions that make of AWP. (For writers outside institutions, it's another story.) Yet I still often feel that there are too many blind spots that persist, particularly in terms of the composition of panels. A friend who attended the Digital lit panel, for example, noted that not a single writer of color was on it or discussed. (This was the subject of a paper I gave at the MLA and so I was particularly interested to hear how the AWP panel turned out, especially since I could not attend it.) The same was true of other generalist panels at the conference. Yet in other cases, where panel organizers did the work of trying to look beyond a narrow ken, the panels were more racially and ethnically diverse. As VIDA has once again made clear, the problem of sexism also continues to plague the American literary landscape, and AWP, given its power, can become a force to change things. But the barriers in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class that are endemic to academe and academic institutions carry over into a conference like AWP. As I said, I felt this year's conference was better than prior ones, but that could be my limited perspective. It is up to AWP's members and participants, though, as much as to its organizers, to continue the improvements the organization has made.

US Poet Laureate and Dark Room longtime member
Natasha Trethewey opening the Dark Room Reunion Reading
at the AWP Conference

Dark Room cofounder Sharan Strange reading her work

Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis performing
with Thomas Sayers Ellis at the Dark Room Reunion reading

Tracy K. Smith concluding the Dark Room reading

My chief reason for attending this year was to participate in the Dark Room Writers' Collective reunion reading, which took place on Thursday afternoon at 3 pm at the Hynes Convention Center. It was an especially important reunion because Cambridge was where the Dark Room began, and on a personal level, it was where I went to college and worked for many years; Boston was the city where all of us cut our literary teeth as writers, and the Dark Room's final home before its dissolution in the late 1990s. Natasha Trethewey, the current Poet Laureate of the United States, could not participate because she is an AWP board member, but she did introduce the event, which included amany of us who had been members through the years: Tisa Bryant, Tracy K. Smith, Artress Bethany White, and Kevin Young; founders Thomas Sayers Ellis, Janice Lowe, and Sharan Strange; and I. As has become a tradition at reunion readings, a younger writer, poet Abiku Roger Reeves, joined us, as did the talented young saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, who performed expertly with Thomas. A number of other fellow members who couldn't attend were there in spirit. The room was full, and despite starting a little after 3, we didn't go over and were able to participate in a lively Q&A afterwards with the audience, which included a number of writers, elders and youngsters, all of us had met, learned from and worked with over the years. So goes the Dark Room motto: TOTAL LIFE IS WHAT WE WANT.

My other reason for attending was to join students to answer question at the Rutgers-Newark MFA table, at the Book Fair, something I'd done for Northwestern's MFA program at last year's AWP. I am always fascinated by the range of people who stop by the table to inquire about the program. During one lull, however, passing before the table wasn't just one of the many amazing authors peopling event, but, as I quickly noted, extracting my camera for posterity's sake, one of the greatest living authors in the Arabic or any language, Adonis (Adunis), who was supposed to pay a visit to Chicago (and the Poetry and Poetics Program at Northwestern) in the fall of 2011, but was too ill to do so. I stopped him and Khaled Mattawa, and translator and escort for the day, asked if I could take his picture, and he graciously allowed me to do so. Though I had had to miss his event the prior day, I also got to thank him in person for his work. After he'd moved on, several other people milling about nearby asked who he was, and I was glad to tell them.

The extraordinary Adonis (Adunis - أدونيس;)

At the Derek Walcott-Seamus Heaney
reading and conversation at AWP

The third reason I attended the conference was to attend a dinner at a great Ethiopian restaurant hosted by Prairie Schooner and the University of Nebraska Press, with the great Kwame Dawes serving as Chief-of-Ceremony and colleague Chris Abani (whom I'd never met in person) as reader, in honor of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, on whose panel I'd served in selecting the inaugural winner, the tremendous young Kenyan poet Clifton Gachagua. He wasn't there nor was one of the judges, Bernardine Evaristo, but in attendance were two others, Matthew Shenoda and Gabeba Baderoon.  I also had the opportunity to meet poet Nathalie Handal, who'll be visiting Rutgers-Newark in several months, and two British poets whom I've admired from afar for many years: Kadija Sesay George and Dorothea Smartt. (In fact they'd been on a panel the prior afternoon, but because my train was delayed by over two hours as a result of the snow and who knows what else, I had to spring to my event and so was unable to catch them.) Also present and offering spirited remarks was Laura Sillerman herself. One final treat of the evening was a video that convened two of the giants of contemporary African literature; in it Kofi Anyidohoo interviewed Kofi Awoonor, who later read from a new long poem.

Kwame Dawes, leading the proceedings
at the Sillerman Book Prize dinner

Chris Abani, reading poems by great
African poets, and his own beautiful poetry

After dinner (l-r): Tracy K. Smith, Matthew Shenoda, Kwame Dawes,
Nathalie Handal, Chris Abani, and another dinner guest

I ran into so many writers over the weekend I could fill multiple blog posts just listing them, and I will inevitably leave people out, so I'll say instead that it was wonderful as always running into so many old friends and making new ones, and I especially appreciated having the opportunities to chat and spend time with some of them at various points throughout the trip. I must mention that the first person I ever read with outside college, at the Dark Room, was Samuel R. Delany, one of my heroes, and I happened upon him Friday afternoon as I was leaving the Hynes with the Dark Room writers and other friends. I can hardly express how important he has been to me as a writer, as an intellectual, as someone who puts his ideas and art into practice, and I cherish ever opportunity I have to see him. As it happened as I was speaking with him, the head of Rutgers-Newark's MFA program, Jayne Anne Phillips, a writer I first began reading at the behest of my friend Kevin Keels shortly after I joined the Dark Room, was passing by, so they got to speak and I felt that in that moment, a circle was coming together, uncannily. There were many such moments, including running into my former NYU classmate Martha Witt on the train up to Boston; Martha was a dear friend when we were in graduate school and now teaches in New Jersey, and we were able to exchange information so that we will no longer have to play phone tag as we had for years.

One final highlight of the visit was participating in a Dark Room photo shoot conducted by the acclaimed photographer Elsa Dorfman, in her studio in Cambridge. Thomas, who'd serendipitously happened upon her during one of her visits to New York, arranged for several photos using a large frame color Polaroid camera, and in addition to the fun of hanging out, watching Dorfman work her photographic magic was priceless. Many aspects of prior AWP conferences have faded, but I don't think I'll soon forget this one or the enjoyable time I had. That it occurred in Boston makes it that much more special.

The third Dark Room Portrait, by Elsa Dorfman
(l-r: John Keene, Danielle Legros-Georges, Janice Lowe, Tisa Bryant,
Major Jackson, Sharan Strange, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Artress
Bethany White, Patrick Sylvain, Tracy K. Smith)

Nobel Prize for Lit or American Fictionistas Need Not Apply

Tonight, at the end of my graduate fiction class, as we were circulating next week's stories and concluding a very brief discussion of Gloria Naylor's "Mattie Michael," from The Women of Brewster Place, one of the students mentioned that on Thursday, the Swedish Academy will award the Nobel Prize in Literature. (The prizes in physiology or medicine, i.e., biomedical research, and physics, have been awarded already, the former to someone who unfortunately had passed away between the award decision and the announcement. Tomorrow the chemistry prize winners will be named. On Friday the Peace Prize will be promulgated, and Monday will bring a new economics winner or winners.)  Usually the grad students don't mention the Nobel Prize in Literature until after the fact, but this student and several others were excited about the pending notice, and one mentioned that it was unlikely that an American fiction writer would honored, which reminded me of this Salon article, "Why American Novelists Don't Deserve the Nobel Prize," by Alexander Nazaryan, that Reggie H. forwarded to me yesterday (or was it today? It's all a blur!).

Before I address the article, let me say that I hope a POET or someone who primarily writes poetry wins the prize this year. There are many extraordinary poets living and writing these days, many outstanding ones doing so within the Euro-American orbit, and many outside it. One such worthy, Adunis (Ali Ahmad Said Asbar) (1930-, born in Syria), was supposed to visit the university a few weeks ago but was too ill to join us; in his place came another such worthy, Raúl Zurita (1950-, from Chile), about whom I have posted several times.  Although I have zero influence with the Swedish Academy (although reading their guidelines, I realize that given my academic post, I can write a letter nominating someone, not that anyone affiliated with that institution will read it, but...), I sincerely hope and will send positive vibes that they spread the love around genrewise and honor a poet. Or someone who writes what's now commonly called creative nonfiction but which I guess might also be labeled imaginative, non-journlistic, non-scholarly prose. There are lots of fine examples of that genre too. And there are always the playwrights.

Now, back to Nazaryan's article. He notes that no American since Toni Morrison in 1993 has won the Nobel Prize in literature, and goes on to say American fiction writers don't deserve the honor because, qua former Swedish Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl, they/we are "too isolated, too insular," they/we don't look outside the borders of the US, they're/we're narcissistic, etc. Nazaryan slams Harold Pinter for his still valid Nobel Award ceremony speech (I mean, does anyone thinking clearly doubt that the US's invasion of Iraq was anything but illegal and criminal?), but then goes on cite the Ladbrokes tip on winners (Thomas Pynchon is in first place), after which he reduces all of contemporary American fiction writers to a tidy, ugly category, the "Great Male Narcissists," drawn from a David Foster Wallace essay. (Yes, him--what is the force field this writer has over so many literary journalists?) Que up trashing MFA programs. Cite a TS Eliot essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (you know, "dissociation of personality," etc.)  Then Nazaryan makes the outrageous claim that Jhumpa Lahiri is a South Asian female "Great Male Narcissist." (Mr. Nazaryan, please just read "The Third and Final Continent" if you need to be abused of this notion.) Anyone who doesn't fit into this formula is of course ignored. You can read the rest and gag.

Anyways, this got me to thinking: have the recent Nobel Laureates in Literature all the antithesis of "isolated," and "insular"? Do they not write about the "self," "themselves"? Do they write about life outside their native countries or societies? Let's look. The last 10 Nobel Laureates in Literature, going backwards, have been 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa (primarily fiction, Peru); 2009: Herta Müller (fiction, Germany/Romania); 2008: J-M. G. LeClézio (fiction, France); 2007: Doris Lessing (fiction and imaginative prose, UK); 2006: Orhan Pamuk (fiction, Turkey); 2005: Harold Pinter (drama, UK); 2004: Elfriede Jelinek (fiction and drama, Austria); 2003: J. M. Coetzee (fiction, South Africa); 2002: Imre Kértesz (fiction, Hungary); 2001: V. S. Naipaul (fiction and imaginative prose, Trinidad & Tobago/UK).  That is a very male, fiction-weighted, Europe-heavy list, ahem.

Now, I can say authoritatively that every single one of these authors initially wrote first and foremost about life in their native countries.  In the cases of Vargas Llosa, Müller, Pamuk, Jelinek, and Kértesz, they have tended to write about almost nothing else, though Pamuk's and Kértesz's works are historically inflected in very interesting ways, and Vargas Llosa's novels moved from to personal to grander, broader social and political themes, with some of the more recent books set outside Peru, such as The Feast of the Goat, which treats the Dominican Republic under Rafael Trujillo. Jelinek's works are extremely insular (and unreadable). Müller writes about emotional, psychological, social, and political isolation and insularity (quite beautifully). Pinter's works, while ostensibly set in the UK, could take place in many different places, but a central theme for many of them social and psychological isolation, and, especially in the later works, play on and with selfhood and its discontents--but, as I said, are not geographically bounded, for the most part. Lessing's realist works, while geographically situated, turn primarily on themes and tropes more so than place. Coetzee wrote primarily about South Africa (how could he not?), but his later works range widely in many senses; geographically, from Russia (The Master of Petersburg) to a fictional island and the UK (Foe), to the US and Australia (Diary of a Very Bad Year).  His masterpiece Elizabeth Costello is set in a range of places, including Heaven, or something like that realm. Intellectually they range as widely. LeClézio's work, after his first few books, seems set all over the place, but having skimmed a few of his novels, I'm not sure I buy any of them; they strike me as exercises in exoticism. But I haven't finished a single one, so I could be very wrong. Naipaul's writing ranges all over the place, but is essentially ALWAYS about V.S. Naipaul. He has no other subject, which is why after A House for Mr. Biswas and Miguel Street, two jewels, I cannot bear to read his work. I personally have no problem with any of these writers' approaches; what matters is the work they produce. Insular or outward-looking, isolated in its focus or catholic, if it's great work, it's great work.

All of which is to say that the criticisms of American fiction writers are not exactly fair if you look 1) at broader spectrum of who is writing and publishing fiction in the US today and what those works address and 2) at who has received the Nobel Prize, at least in the last 10 years, though one could go further back, and whether those works defy the critiques above. I get what Nazaryan and others like Engdahl are saying, but I just think they've settled on a hobbyhorse that doesn't really capture how rich American fiction writing truly is, especially if you go beyond the biggest (mostly male) names Nazaryan cites. And as the above international list suggests, these writers all started by writing about the societies they've spent most of their time in. Some of them, in fact, effectively have written the same novel, about that same place, over and over. I don't have any problem with anyone doing that, so long as the variations are compelling. That's all that matters. But back to fiction. The Swedish Academy missed Robert Bolaño, who did range across countries and ideas, and there are other fictionists like Wilson Harris, Maryse Condé, Nuruddin Farah, A. B. Yehoshua, Shariar Mandanipour, Margaret Atwood, Javier Marías, Dubrakva Ugresic, Haruki Murakami, etc. very deserving of the prize. As for Thursday...who do you think will be honored?