The ‘Largest Literary Conference in North America’ comes to Minneapolis

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (or AWP) holds a conference each year in a different city. Minneapolis, MN was lucky enough to be chosen this year to host the ‘largest literary conference in North America.’ Approximately 13,000 people attended.

What’s the AWP you ask? Good question. From their website:

AWP provides support, advocacy, resources, and community to nearly 50,000 writers, 500 college and university creative writing programs, and 130 writers’ conferences and centers. Our mission is to foster literary achievement, advance the art of writing as essential to a good education, and serve the makers, teachers, students, and readers of contemporary writing.

https://www.awpwriter.org/about/overview

I actually wasn’t going to go to the conference at first. Registration pricing for non-members ran from $230 (back in Oct of 2014) all the way up to $285 for walk-ups. However, there was a “Saturday Pass” for only $40, which is more in-line with this dark fiction author’s budget.

The AWP Convention consisted of wall-to-wall programming, live readings and a massive bookfair. Not to mention Minneapolis held many tie-in events across the city, because Minneapolis is cool like that. Did you know that Minneapolis is recognized as the most literate city in the US?

The Snazzy

The convention registration process was impressive. The layout of the registration area and kiosks provided plenty of stations for people to register. Each kiosk held at least four computers and a printer for printing your conference badge. An assistant attended each kiosk, reminding me of the ‘self-checkout’ at some stores. I asked if they had experienced any long lines, and they said there was a line when they first opened, but that went fairly quickly and there really hasn’t been a line since. Well done.

The programming was impressive. Literally hundreds of panels spanned the 4-day conference, covering many different aspects of writing fiction. (Well, Most fiction anyway. See below.) I attended panels on historical accuracy, the crossover of writing and musicianship, and the evolving relationships between traditional publisher-editors and their authors (sans agent.) All of the presentations were of 3000 to 5000 college level caliber.

It took me a moment to process the event list when I got to “Lactation Room.” Ugh. Why would anyone want to talk about that, amiright? The next listing was “Quiet Room” and then it all made sense. I wish there’d been a “Phelm Room” because I’m still dealing with congestion from my bout with pneumonia not long ago. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is there was a lot of thought put into this event.

For example, check out the #AWP15 Tweet Sheet. It’s a guideline for using Twitter at the conference. QED.

The bookfair was vast. It took close to an hour just to wander the aisles of the bookfair, and that was without interacting with the vendors. There were tons of college presses present, and indie publishers. A healthy dose of indie-author support services, and even some startup software companies to help either teach writing courses or otherwise make your writing better. I met some great local resources that I’ll pass along in future blog posts…

But first, let me point out some areas that could use some improvement.

The Meh

Registering online before the event required a membership. Ick. Instead, I showed up at the door with $40 and a winning smile. Sadly, the registration process required me to create an account and membership with AWP anyway. Had I known that, I would have registered online. Grr. I suspect this has to do with the AWP’s grant eligibility a’la the National Endowment for the Arts. In which case, the more members they have, the better their funding. Fine, I suppose. But I personally don’t want be a “member” of every business I do business with. Disappointing, when you are already paying premium pricing to attend. And I’ll be more disappointed when they start spamming me to renew my membership.

The program scheduling was… strange. The programming ran until 5:45PM, with a break around noon for lunch. But the bookfair closed at 5PM (and some people started packing up around 3:30). Which means if you managed to fill your day with non-stop programming, you would miss the bookfair. So in order to fit the bookfair into your schedule, you may have to miss out on lunch or some programming. This scheduling problem is compounded when you are running on a Saturday Only pass, so I suppose this could be avoided with a weekend pass. But couldn’t they have scheduled a larger break in the programming, or let the bookfair run longer into the evening?

Speaking of breaks in the programming, there was a large opening between 6PM at the end of the programming and the “open bar’ at 10PM. (You read correctly. “Open Bar” as in free alcoholic beverages, ie: author kryptonite.) The “AWP Public Reception & Dance Party” was held at the Hilton on South Marquette FOUR HOURS after everything else shut down. As I said, the city of Minneapolis took advantage of this lull and held all kinds of events to draw con attendees (and their wallets) out into the city proper.

So, do I carouse downtown from 6 till 10? Or do I go home and come back? Sleep in my car? Trick question, because if you are parking anywhere near the convention center, you are paying to park. Yet another case where “there is no free beer.” The correct answer is – I stopped at the liquor store on the way home and came out money ahead.

But all of the above were very minor issues, and nothing that wouldn’t keep me from attending the AWP Conference if it ever returned to Minneapolis. It was definitely worth the $40 day pass. However, one thing really stood out and really bothered me.

Literary Fiction vs That Other Type Of Fiction That We Just Don’t Ever Mention. Ever.

Here are the types of art recognized, reviewed, sold and discussed at the AWP Conference:

• Poetry
• Book and paper arts.
• More Poetry
• College presses teeming with contemporary fiction and memoirs…
• …and even more Poetry
• Literary Reviews
• Books of Poems
• Books on how to improve your writing
• Oh yes, and there was also an overabundance of Poetry.

But genre fiction essentially did not exist. I was disappointed at the absence of genre (aka “speculative”) fiction: horror, fantasy, science fiction, weird, etc… Disappointed, but not surprised. I knew this would be the case before I attended, as it’s a well-known stigma within the industry. To this day, I don’t understand why genre fiction is treated by the Literati as… well, it actually isn’t treated. Like I said, they just don’t talk about it. The emphasis was clearly on the ‘literary’ both in the discussion panels and the book fair.

Let’s have a look at that self-description again:

AWP provides support, advocacy, resources, and community to nearly 50,000 writers, 500 college and university creative writing programs, and 130 writers’ conferences and centers. Our mission is to foster literary achievement, advance the art of writing as essential to a good education, and serve the makers, teachers, students, and readers of contemporary writing.

At first glance, it looks like there is plenty of overlap with genre fiction. I don’t know of a genre author who is against “literary achievement” or “advancing the art of writing.” But that pesky “contemporary writing” clause implies writing that is true as possible to the time period in which it is written.  In other words, they want writing that captures the really-real world. Made-up characters and conflicts that never existed are fine. Stories can take place in geographies and time periods where we know they never did, as long as your fashion and technology are accurate to the geography/time. But made-up-stuff like vampires, werewolves, aliens and monsters are right out?

Someone’s gonna need to explain to me how poetry is OK, but urban fantasy is not.

One last observation. 13,000 people came to this conference. Just imagine how many people would attend if they stopped discriminating against genre fiction? What would happen if they admitted to themselves that genre fiction is every bit as much “writing” as poetry and memoirs? OK, I’m done complaining.

Summary

Despite some minor issues, the AWP Conference was a win for me. I attended some great panels, met some great people, found out about some cool services at the bookfair, and caught up with fellow authors Michael Merriam, Abra Staffin-Wiebe and Catherine Lundoff. I definitely got my $40 worth for the Saturday Only pass.

I won’t be following the conference to San Francisco next year, but if it ever stops by Minneapolis again, I’ll be sure to go. If you’re an author who wants to improve your literary-ness, (or buy some poetry) you should definitely attend this conference.