By Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
It’s time for our annual WWS-AWP guide. Below you will find a list of panels, readings, and book signings featuring our members, including the release of our very first anthology, ACCOLADES on Thursday, March 5th at La Botanica. Last year in Portland, I chose to only attend WWS events, and the result was inspiring. I wrote about the powerful collaborative panels I was lucky to attend last year in this piece for our blog. If you’re overwhelmed by all the offerings, try what I did and pick a few events from our list.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2020
The Twig Book Shop: 306 Pearl Pkwy #106 San Antonio, TX 78215 / 7pm-9pm / FREE
Featuring WWS member, Lorinda Toledo. From description: “Please join us for our Neon Lit Alumni Reading @ AWP, San Antonio! There will be raffles/prizes.”
THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2020
Making Place in Hybrid Tongues
Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 2016A / 10:35am-11:50am / FREE
Featuring WWS member, Sehba Sarwar. From description: “This panel highlights the work of writers who explore remembered and imagined attachments with place. Featuring five women of color whose living and writing transcend national borders and literary genres, the panel asks whether the places we navigate demand their own hybrid literary forms. Writers who wear multiple tags—novelist, memoirist, poet, translator, critic—read from new work. These works embody aesthetic and political choices involved in representing locales across genres.”
One Day on the Gold Line (Black Rose Writing 2019) Book Signing Featuring Carla R Sameth / Bookfair, Table #958 / 1pm-5pm
Accolades: WWS Anthology AWP Release Party
La Botanica: 2911 N Saint Marys St, San Antonio, Texas 78212 / 4pm-7pm / FREE
Join us in celebrating the release of ACCOLADES: a Women Who Submit Anthology at AWP! We will have featured readers, copies of the anthology for sale, and La Botanica will have drinks and food for sale. We’ve been empowering women and nonbinary writers to submit work for publication since 2011, but this is our very first, all our own publication.
One Poem Festival: Canto Mundo, Letras Latinas, and Macondo
San Antonio Public Library: 600 Soledad St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 6pm-7:30pm
Featuring WWS member, Vickie Vértiz as well as other writers from Macondo Writers Workshop, Canto Mundo, and Letras Latinas.
Poetry on the River Walk | AWP Offsite
Casa Rio (Veranda Room): 430 E commerce St., San Antonio, TX / 6:30pm-10pm / FREE
Featuring WWS member, Tanya Ko Hong. From description: “Join 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest, and Quarterly West for an AWP offsite poetry reading. Walk from the conference center to Casa Rio (Veranda Room), located on the River Walk. Free drinks and appetizers while they last. See you there!”
Tupelo Press 30/30/Conference Alumni Reunion Reading
La Villita Historic Arts Village: 418 Villita St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 7pm-9pm / FREE
Featuring WWS member, Donna Spruijt-Metz along side other Tupelo Press alumni. From description: “This fifth annual Alumni Reunion Reading for 30/30 and Conference alums.”
FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020
ACCOLADES: A WWS Anthology Book Signing Featuring WWS Contributors / Bookfair, Nosotrxs: More Than Books #1038 / 12pm-2pm
The Woven Verse: An Exploration of the Latinx Verse Novel in Kidlit
Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 217B / 12:10pm-1:35pm
Featuring WWS Member, Vickie Vértiz. From description: “Latinx novels in verse have burst the children’s and young adult literary world open with award-winning and groundbreaking books. Join celebrated authors as they delve into the craft of writing a novel through the art of poetry as well as how their unique Latinx identity and experiences inform and nourish their work.”
New Suns: Afrofuturist and Cyborg Aesthetics
Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 214B / 1:45pm-3pm
Featuring WWS member, Karolyn Gehrig. From description: “Octavia Butler writes, “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” Taking a cue from Butler—Afrofuturist and disabled writer—this panel will discuss and demonstrate some new suns. What can a poem do in the 21st century? What is the strange new grammar of screens? How do we create and conscript images for activism? Panelists work in multiple genres including creative nonfiction, mixed media, performance, and poetry.”
To Be Young, Black, & Tenure Track: Diversity in Higher Education
Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 008 / 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
Featuring WWS member, Ryane Granados. From description: “What does it mean when you walk into a classroom and the person at the podium looks like you? As colleges across the nation increase diversity and inclusion efforts to close equity gaps for students of color, they may be overlooking one thing—diverse faculty representation. Published authors and professors, our panelists share best practices for culturally responsive pedagogy, their experiences in academia, tips for supporting Black teachers, as well as how they make time for writing.”
UGA Author Signing Featuring Colette Sartor / Bookfair, UGA Press Booth #1730 / 3pm
Veliz Books, offsite reading
Menger Hotel: 204 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, TX 78205, United States / 5:30pm / FREE
Featuring WWS member, Sehba Sarwar.
3×3: Offsite With ALR, The Pinch, and The Arkansas International
Francis Bogside: 803 S Saint Marys St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 6pm-8pm
Featuring WWS member, Soleil Davíd. From description: “3×3: A reading hosted by American Literary Review, The Pinch Literary Journal, and The Arkansas International. Come join us for another #awp off-site reading.”
New Futures: Apogee x Offing Off-Site
The Cherrity Bar: 302 Montana St., San Antonio, Texas 78203 / 6pm-8pm FREE
From description: “2020 is The Offing’s fifth birthday and Apogee’s ten-year anniversary! Come celebrate with six authors (all joint contributors) who are writing what’s possible for literatures to come. We’ll dream up what our communities need for ten more years of extraordinary publishing—writing for us and by us, another decade at the outermost.”
Saturday, March 7, 2020
Women Trespassing: Women Breaking the Rules in Fiction and Their Writing Careers
Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 008 / 9am-10:15am
Featuring WWS member, Liz Harmer. From description: “A Catholic-turned-Buddhist has sex with her Zen master. A biomechanist builds a deer suit to live in the woods. A woman stalks the celebrity living on her street. A girl basketball player navigates a male-dominated world. In this panel, women writers discuss how they write trespassing women and break rules in their writing lives. Women writers have been too long excluded from spaces of authority. We’re taking the power back. This panel is for writers ready to make risky choices and daring work.”
In Limbo: The Dilemma of Digital Thesis Repositories
Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 210B / 10:35 am to 11:50 am
Featuring WWS member, Lorinda Toledo. From description: “As universities across the nation have transitioned to electronic theses, many graduate students face a dilemma: to earn a degree they are required to submit their work to a digital thesis repository. And though several top programs offer exemptions, not all programs protect students from having to submit their creative work to open-access repositories. What solutions exist for programs to protect creative theses from future publication roadblocks or potential piracy? We’ll describe a few.”
Macondo Writers Workshop Book Signing Featuring Sehba Sarwar / Bookfair, Gemini Ink/Macondo Booth #1471 / 12pm
Writing Medicine: The Role of Artists in Cultural and Community Healing
Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 213 / 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Featuring WWS member, Maya Chanchilla. From description: “In November 2018, the FBI reported that hate crimes increased for the third consecutive year. Writers and artists build resilience and help communities heal, not only through our work on the page, but through our work in the world. Panelists offer reflections on their healing practices, from hosting pláticas following the Pulse Nightclub shooting, to working with Central American migrants at the border, to rewriting the centuries-old proclamation for the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
Being an Accomplice: Supporting Local Communities through Literary Programming
Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 206B / 1:45-3pm
Featuring WWS members, Kate Maruyama and Traci Kato-Kiriyama. From description: “There is an explosion of literary events all over the country, from readings showcasing famous writers to poetry nights at the local bookstore. But a neighborhood, a community, a city needs more. Literary accomplices can work together to create events that open spaces, fight erasure, and shift culture, providing environments that are safe, generative, supportive, and inclusive. Join four panelists producing events around the country to elevate the unique communities in which they work.”
Chicanas de la Frontera: Writing and Activism from the Border States
Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 205 / 1:45pm-3pm
Featuring WWS members Marisol Baca, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, and Viktoria Valenzuela. From description: “In the tradition of the 1960s Chicano Movement, made well-known by the United Farm Workers strikes of Central Valley, California, and high school blowouts of Los Angeles, Chicana poets and writers from the four border states—Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California—discuss creative writing, activism, and the connections between the two. Listen to poems and stories from the borderlands, learn about current day actions to fight tyranny, and gain strategies for organizing in your own communities.”
#DignidadLiteraria Read-In at AWP
The Grassy Slope Outside the Henry B. González Convention Center / 5pm / FREE
Featuring many Latinx and BIPOC writers. From description: “No badges. No featured writers. Just us, our words, our people, our dignity.”
