Yes, I am starting with the city because, while the conference was also awesome, the city was even awesome-er (don't judge me you English majors and grammarians). I arrived in Colorado expecting to see mountains and, at first sight, there were none. We arrived on a snowy day, which obscured the giants surrounding the flat plane that contains Denver and its surrounding towns. I was sufficiently distracted by the conspiracy theories behind Denver airport to avoid complete devastation at this. Thankfully, Laura pointed out that we could see a snatch of mountainside through the skyscrapers from our hotel window. Though Denver, unlike Chicago, is not renowned for any specific food oddity, the food was fantastic (always a priority with me). I sampled more of the off sight AWP events this year and I was not disappointed. Professor Jehanne Dubrow's reading was in a wonderful Irish pub whose name has already escaped me. Of course the reading was fantastic, and we decided to come back for more of a pub experience the next night.
And now for the Conference itself. The fact that the book fair was all in one room made the whole thing seem less chaotic. In Chicago, there were book fair rooms all over the place. It made me feel lost, like I was constantly forgetting something. However, it also seemed like there were less people there, which made chocolate snatching more difficult. If a vendor had awesome chocolate, but you didn't actually want to talk to them, you could usually count on someone else being there to distract them. Don't worry, I'm not a thief, a lot of book tables have courtesy candy that they display to lure you in. On a practical level, I had the opportunity to notice a lot more grad school programs, which I had only skimmed over last year. While I do not want to get an MFA, I found several Women's Studies programs. The other thing I noticed is the large amount of feminist publications and panels. This was very exciting for me, because that is my field of interest within the literary spectrum. My favorite panel was called "All Around Bitch: Portraying Unlikable Female Protagonists" this was closely followed by "Gurlesque: a Poetry Reading." I learned a lot from both of these things, including the panelists with whom I disagreed.
I was also excited by how many Washington College Alumni I met there. It is encouraging to see that some of them go on to become legitimate writers (or at least they fake it very convincingly). While I do not foresee myself going to AWP in the future, I think that it is a wonderful opportunity for students. Any of you who have the chance to go, take it! It can be very eye opening.
-Mary DiAngelo '10
And now for the Conference itself. The fact that the book fair was all in one room made the whole thing seem less chaotic. In Chicago, there were book fair rooms all over the place. It made me feel lost, like I was constantly forgetting something. However, it also seemed like there were less people there, which made chocolate snatching more difficult. If a vendor had awesome chocolate, but you didn't actually want to talk to them, you could usually count on someone else being there to distract them. Don't worry, I'm not a thief, a lot of book tables have courtesy candy that they display to lure you in. On a practical level, I had the opportunity to notice a lot more grad school programs, which I had only skimmed over last year. While I do not want to get an MFA, I found several Women's Studies programs. The other thing I noticed is the large amount of feminist publications and panels. This was very exciting for me, because that is my field of interest within the literary spectrum. My favorite panel was called "All Around Bitch: Portraying Unlikable Female Protagonists" this was closely followed by "Gurlesque: a Poetry Reading." I learned a lot from both of these things, including the panelists with whom I disagreed.
I was also excited by how many Washington College Alumni I met there. It is encouraging to see that some of them go on to become legitimate writers (or at least they fake it very convincingly). While I do not foresee myself going to AWP in the future, I think that it is a wonderful opportunity for students. Any of you who have the chance to go, take it! It can be very eye opening.
-Mary DiAngelo '10
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