AWP 2016: BLP Author Events

We hope to see you at AWP in Los Angeles! Black Lawrence Press will be at booth #1526, so please come see us! If you can, stop by during one of our many author signings, or come to our offsite event at the CB1 Gallery on Thursday the 31. Also, check out all the great readings, panels, and events featuring our authors:

Thursday, March 31

 
Event: Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Reading
Date: Thursday, March 31
Time: 12:00 – 1:15
Location: Robert Muroff Bookfair Stage, Convention Center, Exhibit Hall Level
Participants: Sass Brown, Lisa Fay Coutley, Gregory Kimbrell, Jennifer Richter
Description: reading from Open Competition winners
Event:  I Got You Babe: The (Dis)Harmonies of Collaboration
Date:Thursday, March 31
Time: 12:00 – 1:15
Location: Room 511, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Participants: Matthew Rohrer, Simone Muench, Dean Rader, Carol Guess, Brittany Cavallaro
Brief Description:What are the perils and pleasures of literary co-play? Collaboration in film, dance, music, and the visual arts is commonplace; however, in literary fields, authorial collaborations are often looked upon with skepticism and incredulity by both readers and publishers. And yet, collaborative projects are on the rise. Five poets who translate, sample, and co-author collaborate here to discuss the innovations, advantages, and artistry of working with other writers–both living and dead.
Event: Book Signing: The Spoons in the Grass are There to Dig a Moat
Date: Thursday, March 31
Time: 3:00
Location: Sarabande Books, Booth #513
Participant: Amelia Martens
Brief Description: Amelia will be signing copies of her full-length prose poem collection, which is the 2014 Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature selection from Sarbande Books.
Event: Joy Is So Exhausting’: The Contemporary Poetics of Motherhood.
Date: Thursday, March 31st
Time: 4:30 – 5:45
Location: Gold Salon 2, JW Marriott LA, 1st Floor
Participants: Callista Buchen, Molly Sutton Kiefer,Jennifer Givhan, Martha Silano, Rachel Richardson
Brief Description: As Rachel Blau DuPlessis points out, “motherhood leads to, demands, provokes, and excites innovations in poetry.” This panel explores these innovations, studying contemporary poetry that takes motherhood as its subject. From the motherhood in poetry as myth-making and myth-destroying to poets conceptualizing their writing as mothers to the inherent tensions at work, including how the lens of motherhood reshapes external landscapes, this panel finds a poetics full of possibility and insight.
Event:  Grand Buffet: Boaat, Diode, Quarterly West
Date: Thursday, March 31
Time: 6:00-8:00
Location: La Cita Bar, 336 S Hill St.
Participants: Mark Braumer, Kai Carlson-Wee, Anders Carlson Wee, Jess Feldman, Eileen G’Sell, Anna Maria Hong, Vandana Khanna, Matthew Minicucci, Peter Murphy, Philip Schaefer, sam sax, Stephanie Schlaifer, Stacey Tran
Brief Description: It’s Quarterly West’s 40th anniversary with poetry and prose from Boaat and Diode as well. The night will include free food, margaritas, and is only minutes from the convention center.
Event: Sugar, Salt, & Spark: Offsite Reading
Date: Thursday, March 31
Time: 6:00 – 8:00
Location: R Bar, 3331 W. 8th Avenue
Participants: Heather Derr-Smith, Carly Joy Miller, F. Douglas Brown, Lisa Fay Coutley, Danielle Dubrasky, and Kylan Rice.
Description: Journal contributors from Sugar House Review, saltfront, and burntdistrict will read.
Event: Literary Friction
Date: Thursday, March 31st
Time: 7:30 – 9:30
Location: These Days Art Gallery, 118 Winston Street, 2nd FL
Participants: Paisley Rekdal, Campbell McGrath, Lynn Emanuel, Geffrey Davis, Simone Muench, F Douglas Brown, LN Holmes, Anders Carlson-Wee, Kai Carlson-Wee, Nicky Beer, Scott O’Connor
Brief Description:Join Friction, PoemoftheWeek.org & the Floodgate Poetry Series for a FREE and rather raucous celebration of poetry and prose, featuring an OPEN BAR and readings.

Friday, April 1

 
Title: Revising Nonfiction: Surprise, Reflection, and Telling the Truth
Date: Friday April 1
Time: 9:00 – 10:15
Location: Room 405, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Participants: Matthew Gavin Frank, Laura Julier, Kathleen Livingston, Erica Trabold
Description: Revision remains crucial to any writing process, serving to strengthen the work. However, sometimes revision dilutes early insights, and the writing suffers. Nonfiction writers are often susceptible to over-revision because of memory and its malleability. How do journal editors work with writers to bring a piece to its best version? What risks are there in revision, and what can be gained? This panel brings writers and editors into conversation about the negotiations of revising nonfiction.
Event: Hybrids, Bastards, and Half-Breeds: On Writing Hybrid Forms
Date: Friday, April 1
Time: 10:30 – 11:45
Location: Room 410, L.A. Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Participants: Donna Minkowitz, Catherine Liu, M.G. Lord , Sesshu Foster, Carol Guess
Description: Hybrid forms tend to be heartier than the recognized, canonical genres, according to Kim Wright at The Millions. This panel explores the glories of mixing: the formidable creative power that can be won from blending memoir with magic realism or trenchant social critique, fiction with visual art, lyric with essay, fiction, or even journalism. Does the decision to resist the firm divisions of genre let us go beyond expected sentiments, statements, and permissible content?
Event: Signing at Counterpoint Press table
Date: Friday, April 1
Time: 12:00 – 12:30
Location: Counterpoint Press Table, #201
Participants: Joe Wilkins
Brief Description: Joe Wilkins will be signing his memoir The Mountain and the Fathers
Event: Panel F189: PhDon’t?: The Risks and Rewards of the Doctorate for Writers
Date: Friday, April 1
Time: 12:00 – 1:15
Location: Room 504, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Participants: Jessica Piazza, Joshua Bernstein, Jameelah Lang, Rone Shavers, Genevieve Kaplan
Brief Description: What are the drawbacks and benefits for writers pursuing a doctorate? We ask whether the PhD “academizes” creative writing; offers students too much comfort, or not enough; sufficiently accommodates women and minorities; preselects for a certain kind of writer (e.g., one who can meet the testing requirements); promotes creativity or hinders it (through coursework, teaching, doctoral exams, etc.); and offers enough preparation for teaching creative writing at the college level and elsewhere.
Event: ERRATA Book Signing
Date: Friday, April 1
Time: 1:00 – 2:00
Location: Bookfair, Table #519
Participant: Lisa Fay Coutley
Event: Signing at University of Arkansas Press table
Date: Friday, April 1
Time: 1:15 – 2:15
Location: University of Arkansas Press Table
Participants: Joe Wilkins
Brief Description: Joe Wilkins will be signing his latest full-length collection of poems When We Were Birds
Event: Cambridge Writers’ Workshop AWP Reading
Date: Friday, April 1
Time: 4:00 – 5:15
Location: Sabor y Cultura Café 5625 Hollywood Blvd
Participants: Jessica Piazza, Heather Aimee O’Neill, Brenda Peynado, Ondrej Pazdirek, Katie Knoll, Julialicia Case, Gwen E. Kirby, Emily Skaja
Brief Description: The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is coming to Los Angeles for the AWP Conference and we’ll be hosting our AWP Reading: Cambridge Writers’ Workshop takes on Los Angeles! at Sabor y Cultura!
Event: North/South Reading
Date: Friday, April 1
Time: 4:30
Location: PYO Gallery, 1100 South Hope Street, Ste 105, Los Angeles
Participants: Zach Doss, Kathy Fish, Michael Martone, Megan Giddings, and Kelly Magee
Brief Description: Passages North and New South team up for a short-short reading featuring badass contributors Zach Doss, Kathy Fish, Megan Giddings, Kelly Magee, and Michael Martone.
Event: Camp Real Pants One Day Event: GMR, Hunger Mountain and Bloof Reading
Date:  Friday, April 1st
Time: 6:00 – 7:00
Location: Astroetic Studios, 224 E 11th St #700a
Participants: Hadara Bar-Nadav, Simone Muench, Alyse Knorr, Russell Dillon, Melissa Febos, Ginger Ko, Danielle Pafunda
Brief Description: Camp Real Pants is a one day event on Friday, April 1, during the AWP Conference. Along with grub and bug juice, we’re hosting publishing arts & crafts sessions with organizations like VIDA, Submittable, and SPD, plus readings hosted by some great presses and journals. We’ll start the day with lunch at the mess hall, and cap it all off with stories and a singalong around a (fake) campfire.
Event: Red Hen Press and LA Review Reading
Date: Friday, April 1
Time: 6:00 – 8:00
Location: the Velaslavasay Panorama, 1122 W 24th St
Participants: Jessica Piazza, Heather Aimee O’Neill, David Mason, Dana Gioia, Adrianenne Kalfopoulou, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Laurel Ann Bogen, Katharine Coles, Nicelle Davis, Kim Dower, Ramon Garcia, Kevin Goodan, Jane Hilberry, Ron Koertge, Gary Lemons, Jessy Randall, Andrea Scarpino, Jason Schneiderman, Peggy Shumaker, Tess Taylor, Jacqueline Tckakalian, William Trowbridge, Charles Harper Webb, and Sarah Wetzel.
Brief Description: Red Hen Press and The Los Angeles Review team up for a reading from featured authors.

Saturday, April 2

Title: Where Community and Culture Collide: 15 Years of the YMCA’s Downtown Writers Center
Date: Saturday April 2
Time: 10:30 – 11:45
Location: Room 502 A, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Participants: Matthew Gavin Frank, Georgia Popoff, Gregory Pardlo, Jennifer Pashley, Debra Dean Kang, Phil Memmer
Description: Since January 2001, the YMCA’s Downtown Writers Center in Syracuse, NY has been the Central NY State region’s only community center for the literary arts. In its first 15 years, nearly 400 authors have read at the DWC, and thousands of students have honed their craft at the DWC’s extensive creative writing workshop series. This panel of program staff and faculty, former students, and guest authors, will explore and celebrate the DWC’s wide-reaching impact on the literary arts in the CNY region.
Event: Panel Reading
Date: Saturday, April 2
Time: 1:30 – 2:45
Location: Room 405, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Moderator: Renée Watson. Panelists: Janine Joseph, Marc McKee, Lacy Johnson, Renee Flagler
Brief Description: Wonder, unfiltered curiosity, and deepened imagination open us up as writers to seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Writers who teach in schools or community classrooms often develop an unexpected symbiotic relationship in which students and writers inspire one another. This reading honors the imagination and the ways in which teaching can enhance the creative process. Four writers who have taught in WITS programs share work by a student and then read some of their own.
Event: Compelling Fiction ~ Profound Poetry
Date: Saturday, April 2
Time: 2:30 – 5:30 PM
Location: Beverly Hills Public Library, 444 N Rexford Drive
Participants: Victoria Smith and Abayomi Animashaun
Brief Description: Ms. Smith will read from her Driftless Unsolicited Novella Award-winning Faith Healer and her Kirkus-acclaimed poetry collection, Warrior Heart, Pilgrim Soul: An Immigrant’s Journey. Mr. Animashaun will read from his Hudson Prize-winning poetry collection, The Giving of Pears, and his latest, Sailing for Ithaca.
Event: Book Signing for Rough Magick Anthology
Date: Saturday April 2
Time: 3:00 – 4:00
Location: Dangerous Angel Booth #1660
Participants: Tracy DeBrincat, Laura Lee Bahr, Manuel Chavarria, Logan Brendt, Ashley Inguanta, Mary Pauline Lowry and Francesca Lia Block
Brief Description: Book Signing of the anthology “Rough Magick: The Darker Side of Love” with Rough Magick Contributors