I’m not sure how I got on the mailing list for the CLMP (Council of Literary Magazines) Literary Writers Conference that was held in New York City November 20 – 22, 2008. Actually, I rescued the conference flier and my $50.00 off coupon from the junk mailbox. The description of a conference for writers “learning how to maneuver in the literary marketplace” appealed to me, so, coupon in hand, I signed up.

The conference is co-sponsored by The New School and held on its turf. My guess is that there were about 250 attendees drawn from the genres of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. Craft matters, though, were not on the agenda—business topics like “Grassroots Marketing”, “From Blog to Book and Back” and “Agents 101” were.

Sessions for all attendees alternated with smaller seminars; three or four of the latter were offered at the same time and you could select one or stroll among them. My favorite was devoted to dealing with rejections; panelists were Andre Bernard (Rotten Rejections), TJ English (Havana Nocturnes) and Nat Sobel (Sobel Weber Associates) I never fully appreciated how much rejection agents endure—it is no wonder they claimed, over and over again at this conference, that they must be “passionate” about a writer’s work before accepting it. And Andre Bernard, an editor, filtered in some humor when he read one of the rejection letters from his book Rotten Rejections, a compilation of rejection letters once received by now well-respected authors. The group was tickled to hear that the author of the noxious letter was Bernard himself, who had penned the pretentious words decades earlier at his first job for a publishing house, when he was a mere child in his early twenties.

The conference also featured a “Bringle” (bagel + mingle). This event occurred Saturday morning and included not only attendees, but editors and agents as well. It was fun to chat with an editor from Opium and then to clink coffee cups with the owner, operator, and sole employee of a small publishing house who literally operates a press out of his garage. Meeting editors, publishers, and agents, particularly in such an informal setting, puts a human face on the often cold and impersonal process of submitting queries, proposals and manuscripts. People were respectful for the most part and waited to talk to the editor or agent of choice—I didn’t see any steamrollers.

If you don’t have a place to crash in NYC, there are a number of “reasonably priced” (for NYC) hotels within an easy walk. So if you are in the mood for a writers’ conference in late November, and/or a trip to NYC, check out this one. I don’t know what the topic will be next year but you may want to get on the LWC}NYC website and see if you can get on the mailing list. You may get a discount.