Seven thousand AWP registrants hardly made a swell in the population bubble of New York City last month when the 2008 AWP Conference met in Midtown, just a few blocks from Times Square and Rockefeller Center. As many as forty-three scheduled events ran concurrently for each session over the three day event that included panel discussions, book signings, tributes to works and authors, a book fair spread over three floors and a mouse in at least two of the rooms which precipitated a move to another floor and made one wonder: “How does a mouse climb to the 19th floor?”
The session offerings were as diverse as the writers, professors and literary journal publishers, founders and editors in attendance. To choose one over another proved to be a daunting endeavor. The program listings given out at registration totaled over 300 pages, making
it nearly impossible to read through the book carefully and attend sessions at the same time. One of the best-attended sessions was that of Joyce Carol Oates at the same time Ha Jin read from his poetry collections and from his latest novel, A Free Life, which I’d finished a couple of days before leaving for the conference. Those who heard Oates raved about her willingness to share from her own writing experiences as well as from her works. Though I was not disappointed hearing Jin read, I would have liked to have heard Oates, also.
Frank McCourt spoke to a packed room about the importance of language and of teachers who revere the written word and pass along this passion. Billy Collins, headlining the session with McCourt, entertained the audience with his poetry.
One of the more poignant and helpful sessions I attended was a panel sponsored by Briery Creek Press designed to honor the memory of poet, teacher, and bon vivant Liam Rector who died in August, 2007. His colleagues and students so earnestly wished to pay tribute to a man who clearly impacted each of them, that their respective comments transcended traditional niceties to give the audience a sense of Rector’s mentoring style, a mixture of compassion without coddling. “Get back to work!” “Read a hundred books – write one!” challenged Rector. The first winner of the Liam Rector Award, a Louisville
