by Katy Jensen

Years from now, we will probably remember February 2011 for the monstrous winter storm that turned Houston into a skating rink and gave Chicago schoolchildren their first “snow day” in 12 years. From New Mexico to Maine, millions of people struggled to maintain their daily schedules, only to realize the situation was beyond their control. Eventually, millions of people decided to put down the snow shovel and curl up on the couch with a blanket and a good book.

The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Annual Conference and Bookfair can be equally overwhelming: 6,000+ people, 400 events, enough books and topics and energy to fill two of Washington, D.C.’s largest hotels. At the registration desk they hand you a program as thick as a phone book and a canvas tote just begging to be filled.

But once you take that first breath and dive in, you realize that you’re among friends, and you can shape the experience to meet your own agenda. You might jam your days with as many sessions, readings, author signings, and social events as possible. Maybe you’ll spend hours lost in conversation with new friends, or you’ll find a sunny spot to sit and write . . . and read . . . and eavesdrop. Regardless of your objectives or approach, you will emerge with new inspiration and more support than you would have thought possible. And that is what the AWP is all about: it’s an organization whose mission is to “foster literary talent and achievement, to advance the art of writing as essential to a good education, and to serve the makers, teachers, students, and readers of contemporary writing.”

Here are a few things I learned at this year’s conference:

  1. Whoever you are—writer, reader, introvert, diva—the AWP Annual Conference is for you. Sessions are as specific as “Post-Katrina Poetry: Five Years Later” and as ambitious as “Writing: What to Teach, How to Teach It, and Why.”
  2. With 500 tables and booths, and hundreds of author signings, the bookfair alone is worth the trip.
  3. You know you have really Made It when panelists use your memoir as an example during their sessions. (Unless they keep pronouncing it “mē-moir.”)
  4. The difference between fiction and nonfiction will never be clearly defined. Thank goodness, because discussions about it are fascinating.
  5. Kevin Fenton is a ROCK STAR!*
  6. The Loft really is the nation’s premiere literary center, and Open Book really is as special a place as you always thought it was. (Maybe it’s time to renew your Loft membership?)
  7. Accomplished writers agree: the only thing worse than writing about someone you love is not writing about them.
  8. Readers love lists. Especially short ones. That’s why I’m ending this one at 8.

According to Dusty Smith, author of Key Grip: A Memoir of Endless Consequences, you get exactly one shot at uncorrupted memories. A truck pulls up in front of your house, and the driver walks to your door with a box labeled something like “The First Time I Heard My Parents Fight.” The box feels light, almost empty, because memories are ethereal. You have to be ready; you have to open the box very carefully, and inhale, and concentrate, because that’s it. That is your only chance to experience the memory’s pure essence before you begin to confuse it with opinion, artistic license, and everything else that demands shape and logic and meaning.

How will you remember February 2011?

*Kevin Fenton will be reading at Open Book on Saturday, March 26, 7 p.m.

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The AWP Annual Conference and Bookfair will come to the Twin Cities in 2015. But don’t wait that long to check it out!

2012 Chicago, Illinois: February 29–March 3, 2012
2013 Boston, Massachusetts: March 6–9, 2013
2014 Seattle, Washington: February 26–March 1, 2014
2015 Minneapolis, Minnesota: April 8–11, 2015
Katy M. Jensen (katymjensen@aol.com) was a participant in the 2009–2010 Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose, and she served as a final-round judge for the 2010 Minnesota Book Awards. Her essay “Sunrise at 90 South” was published in the anthology Antarctica: Life on the Ice, which won a silver award in the 2008 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition.