I wanted to spend some time shamelessly self-promoting my participation in Conversations and Connections: Practical Advice on Writing, which is happening this Saturday, April 16th here in DC. I’m finding this difficult to do because I’m instead compelled to tell you why I think these conversations and connections are important for all of us editors, writers, publishers, hot dog vendors et. al. in a manner that extends a bit beyond the superficial definition of the words “conversation” and “connection.” Maybe this won’t prove to be an incredibly compelling advertisement for the conference, but I’ve never been quite good at selling myself anyway.
For me to do this, I’d like to provide you with a couple of anecdotes:
1. I met Dave Housley of Barrelhouse in Denver for last year’s AWP. Running into him was sort of an accident: we were at the PANK/DOGZPLOT reading and were ordering beers at the bar. I overhead him talking to someone (who turned out to be Jeff Parker) about one the reader’s “poise.” We had a detailed conversation about readers who go the extra step towards making their reading a performance, and why others who don’t can be so incredibly disappointing. It wasn’t until after we introduced ourselves that we realized we both “knew” each other– I had been in conversation with Dan Brady (a great poet, a great event planner, and an even better friend) about Big Lucks’s participation in the Barrelhouse Presents reading series. Still, we didn’t need to know that about one another to have an engaging conversation about writing.
2. A couple weeks ago, Amber Sparks participated in the first-ever Three Tents reading series. It was nice to finally meet Amber because she said some things on HTML Giant that changed the way Laura and I thought about submission guidelines (and I admittedly gushed for a bit too long about all this when I introduced her). Her and her husband came to say goodbye; we ended up talking for 15-20 more minutes about writing and submitting and the ways in which we could all make this system a little better.
3. Mike Young spent the week of AWP crashing on our couch. We ate lots of eggs together, listened to silly punk music, and talked a lot about the potential renaissance of the maritime novel and how stupid-but-kinda-cool Sidney Crosby is and why we thought Grace Paley’s writing is so important. Now we have gchat conversations about things that are embarrassingly stupid. I sort of think of Mike as an old high school buddy who’s a really good person to kick the shit with and to talk about important stuff when there’s important stuff happening. I doubt he’ll ever “need” me, but I’m there for him if he does. Bro power.
I’m telling you these things not because I want to seem important or as if I have some sort of special connection with these folks; in fact, I’m pointing to them because my relationship with each of these individuals, I think, is no different than any of their other relationships. I’ve seen them interact with people in the indie lit scene, and this is just how they are: emotive, invested, and engaged. So I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming that the people I know in publishing care about the people who submit to their respected journals just as much as they care about themselves.
Sitting at our table at AWP, in the back of this huge conference center and staring at a brick wall, I watched writers try to sell themselves to journals that were trying to sell copies of said journals to said writers. Some of these exchanges seemed fine; others, downright appalling. It’s true that there is a capitalistic nature to publishing and that there needs to be some sort of monetary exchange for us writers and editors to survive, but I think there has to be more to it than that. We need to talk to one another, learn from each and every nuanced experience so we can make this a more rewarding and fulfilling community.
And that’s why Conversations and Connections seems like such an incredibly stellar idea, because there is such intrinsic beauty in those two capitalized words. Here is our opportunity to strip away the ugly and necessarily formalities–the cover letters, the rejection forms, the copy-and-pasted bios, the FNASR contracts–and talk to one another. This might sound like idealistic hogwash, but I do believe this conference will give all of us the opportunity to better understand our needs and our expectations, to figure out what it will take for us to continue fostering a sustainable community with one another.
Dave, Amber, and Mike will all be attending C + C as well. I look forward to talking with them, to connecting with them. And I look forward to connecting to you, too.
