By Noriko Nakada
I’m heading to AWP again this year. Last year was my first because I had the chance to table for Jack Jones Literary Arts. I also listened in on panels, heard from writers I respect and admire, and tackled that book fair.
The book fair is so overwhelming. All of those presses and programs and tables and books and writers. You could run into Jericho Brown wearing a flower crown, or Terese Marie Mailhot signing her memoir, or Wendy Ortiz browsing. In that overwhelm that is the AWP Book Fair, I was star-struck, and buying too many books, and stuck in my head as I wandered the aisles. I saw presses I’d sent work to who had passed. There were presses I’d never heard of. There were presses who’d published me. What did I have to say at these tables where my words were or were not welcome?
I felt lost, and small, so I found my way back to the Jack Jones table again and again. I only tabled there for a few hours over the course of the conference, but it was always a magnet pulling me, and it felt like my home base within that chaos. Even when I wasn’t tabling for them, every time I found myself in that fair, I’d walk by their table, visit with the staff or an author, ask if they needed anything, and help out before making my way to a lecture or panel.
Jack Jones isn’t at AWP this year, but I want to tackle that book fair in a way that feels healthy and productive. I don’t want to feel so lost and overwhelmed. So this is my AWP Book Fair action, and I invite any Women Who Submit members who are attending to join me in putting a little activism into your book fair wanderings.
1) Approach a press with one of our Women Who Submit postcards.
2) Present the card and introduce yourself. Explain a little about Women Who Submit, an organization which, as a response to the VIDA count, empowers women and nonbinary writers to submit their work for publication.
3) Choose your own adventure:
a friendly press: Thank the presses for doing their part to bring more gender equity into the publishing world. Maybe ask how they think they will do on the 2019 count, and what they plan to do to ensure continued equity in 2020. Ask about how they think they’re doing publishing women of color.
a press that is making gains: Acknowledge that the press has improved, but isn’t yet equitable. Ask if they are doing anything to ensure more equitable gains on the 2019 count or for 2020. Ask if they know about their racial representation and how they think they are doing/can do better.
a press that isn’t friendly to women: OK, only one of these is at AWP this year, but go ahead and let them know that they aren’t very equitable in their publishing of women and ask if they’re doing anything to change this. Ask how they might improve their representation of women of color.
a press that isn’t on the VIDA count list: There are so many of these! Ask them how many women editors they have, editors of color, queer editors? Are they actively recruiting marginalized voices? What are their strategies? Do they pay? Are they interested in hearing from our members? Particularly if there are women tabling, and specifically women of color, thank them for the work they are hopefully doing to ensure more equity in publishing.
4) Ask them to look for Women Who Submit members in their slush piles, and to be on the lookout for submissions during our Annual Submission Blitz in August!
5) Record your interaction. Did they seem receptive to WWS’s mission? Any names of editors or upcoming submission deadlines you should note? Will you send them work?
| Press/Table | Response to WWS Mission | Editor Names* | Any upcoming call for submissions | Will you submit? |
Please record your activism on this google form.
https://forms.gle/MNw1syCdMGbX87z49
It’s that simple! Make the most of your AWP!
Press designations from the 2018 VIDA Count: Book Fair location or N/A (not attending)
Friendly Presses
+60% women published
McSweeney’s: T1930
The Missouri Review: N/A
Prairie Schooner: 1668-1669
The Normal School: N/A
Pleiades: T2034
The Cincinnati Review: 1533, 1534
+50% women published
Tin House: 1635
Granta: N/A
Boston Review: N/A
Ninth Letter: 1532
Jubilat: N/A
Colorado Review: 1430
Conjunctions: N/A
Virginia Quarterly: 1129
Fence: 1751
n+1: T1321
The Believer: 1643-1644
New England Review: N/A
Kenyon Review: 1655
Getting Better: (made improvements >+5% in more equitable representation, but still not to 50%)
Poetry: 1457
The New Yorker: N/A
Gettysburg Review: 1135
Southwest Review: T259
Harvard Review: T1220
Male-Dominated Presses (less than 40% women represented)
The Times Literary Supplement: N/A
The Nation: N/A
The Threepenny Review: N/A
London Review of Books: N/A
The Atlantic: N/A
The New York Review of Books: 1058
Find us for WWS cards at the ACCOLADES Release Party on Thursday, March 5th from 4pm-7pm at La Botanica or at the ACCOLADES Book Signing on Friday, March 6th from 12pm-2pm at table Nosotrxs: More Than Books, 1038.
You can also catch WWS members all over AWP. Here is our AWP San Antonio guide.
Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.