Including an exceptional way to kick off AWP with an off site event organized by Kai Coggin of Wednesday Night Poetry in conjunction with WriteGirl to raise money to for teen girls and gender expansive poets directly impacted by the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. The lineup is already amazing, including Chen Chen, Dustin Brookshire, Traci Brimhall, Ruben Quesada, Nickole Brown and many, many more! I hope you’ll join us at The East Angel in the Los Angeles Arts District from 6:30-10:30pm.
Bookfair Book Signing
I’ll be signing copies of A Godless Ascends at the Whale Road Review table in the bookfair on Friday from 12pm – 1pm, so come say hello!
Contact me here if you’d like to purchase a signed copy now–I’m running a spring special for the first birthday of my book, coming up on Spring Equinox on March 20, with free shipping and a free bookmark!
My picks for AWP 2025 (in-person)
I’ll be attending in person so all my picks below are focused on those events.
Wednesday, Mar 26, 2025 |
| 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM PDT |
| 8×9: A Reading by Terrain.org & Writing the Wild
Location: Audio Graph Beer Co. 1203 Olive St. Los Angeles, CA 90016 Join nine place-based writers for a literary reading of eight minutes each, plus brews, to kick off AWP in Los Angeles! No registration required–please join us for this free event! Chips will be served, and buy your drink at the Audio Graph bar. Wednesday, March 26, 7-9 p.m. Audio Graph Beer Co. Los Angeles This event is sponsored by and features contributors to Terrain.org and Writing the Wild. Readers: Annie Wenstrup Chaun Ballard Christina Rivera Jennifer Case Juan Morales Rob Carney Ryo Yamaguchi Sean Hill Simmons Buntin Contact: Simmons Buntin Offsite Location: Offsite |
Thursday, Mar 27, 2025 |
| 9:00 AM – 10:15 AM PDT |
| Hell-Bent Hope: Poets Holding Fast During This Time of Ecological Crisis
Now is a time of ecological crisis and mass extinction, so even if you don’t consider yourself a “nature” poet, all of us need to ask ourselves what the writer’s task is in this climate-changed world. Equally important is how to cope with despair, which can be incapacitating, threatening to silence us under its weight. Together, we’ll discuss how to bear witness to these coming storms and how to define hope in a way that might allow one to move forward with courage, awareness, and yes, even joy. Speaker(s): Presenter: David Baker Presenter: CMarie Fuhrman Presenter: Aimee Nezhukumatathil Presenter: Matthew Olzmann Moderator: Nickole Brown Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Concourse Hall 152, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T112 |
| Predictable Unpredictability: Celebrating the Poetry of Reginald Shepherd
The Pitt Poetry Series is honored to celebrate the poetry of Reginald Shepherd with the recent publication of The Selected Shepherd, selected and with an introduction by Jericho Brown. Drawing from all six of his collections, The Selected Shepherd offers a new retrospective on the work of an important and sometimes controversial Black, gay poet. Five poets will read poems from the collection and share the impact Shepherd had on the poetry community. Speaker(s): Presenter: Camille Rankine Moderator: Jericho Brown Presenter: Timothy Liu Presenter: Kevin Prufer Presenter: Charles Stephens Poetry Readings Reading Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T121 Event Outline – Predictable Unpredictability- Celebrating the Poetry of Reginald Shepherd.pdf |
| You Call That a Book Review?!: On Poetry Criticism and/as Creative Practice
Poet-critics from Poetry Northwest’s Critics at Large program share how their critical practices shape and are shaped by their creative work, how criticism can offer rigorous and novel forms of witness to others’ poetic labors, and their expansive approaches to crafting creative, incisive cultural criticism that explores, complicates, and/or transforms how we read the relationship between poetry and the social, cultural, political, and relational worlds it assembles/dismantles. Speaker(s): Moderator: Nanya Jhingran Presenter: Cristina Correa Presenter: Summer Farah Presenter: Esther Lin Presenter: Dujie Tahat Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 409AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T123 |
| 10:35 AM – 11:50 AM PDT |
| Damaged Bodies in a World: Jewish Poets Writing the Body & the Body Politic
In “Contradictions: Tracking Poems,” Adrienne Rich explains that the challenge of being a poet is to find links between “the pain / of any one’s body with the pain of the body’s world.” How do Jewish poets write about the experience of living in Jewish bodies, all while connecting to larger experiences of trauma? Five poets from diverse Jewish literary traditions will discuss approaches they use to balance the intimate bodily stories with large-scale narratives that lie beyond the self. Speaker(s): Presenter: Jehanne Dubrow Presenter: Hadara Bar-Nadav Presenter: Rodger Kamenetz Moderator: Owen Lewis Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 410, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T151 |
| Hybrid Selves, Hybrid Form: Queer & Feminist Possibilities of the Prose Poem
The prose poem is often first (or entirely) encountered in straight and masculine contexts, associated with Charles Baudelaire’s nineteenth-century pronouncement “Always be a poet, even in prose.” This panel revises that pronouncement to read, “Always be a poet, especially in queer and feminist prose.” Five queer women panelists reveal through reading and conversation an alternative and empowering legacy for the prose poem. Speaker(s): Presenter: Dawn Lundy Martin Moderator: Julie Marie Wade Presenter: Sophie Klahr Presenter: K. Iver Poetry Readings Reading Location: Room 503, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T156 |
| 3:20 PM – 4:35 PM PDT |
| Outside of Academia: Poems Born in & for Community
How can poems be vessels for us to find, commune, and walk alongside our communities outside of institutions? From viral readerships galvanized on Instagram to poems inside the confines of incarceration, these poets know a thing or two about the transformative magic of writing with and for the people and places we belong to. Join us and grapple with the questions: How can poetry be an act of community and kinship? Where can it live and thrive among our loved ones? With dialogue and Q&A, we will tackle big topics like finding an authentic audience and building a community-centered writing life. Speaker(s): Presenter: Desiree Dallagiacomo Presenter: Olivia Gatwood Presenter: Yesika Salgado Presenter: Alyesha Wise Moderator: KC Cullinan Artistic & Professional Development Panel Discussion Location: Concourse Hall 150 ABC, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T224 |
| Theories of Vastness: On Capaciousness in Poetry
What does it mean for a poetic work to be “capacious”? This term implies an expansiveness of scope and experience—the possibility for the primordial and the vatic to converge, the promise of poem as sprawling event. This panel explores the mysteries of the capacious poem, while demystifying capaciousness from a craft perspective. It asks what craft tools can be brought to bear to enact cultural, linguistic, and spiritual vastness in poetic space. Speaker(s): Moderator: Issam Zineh Presenter: Kazim Ali Presenter: Brenda Hillman Presenter: Roger Reeves Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Concourse Hall 151, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T225 |
| Still Surreal: A Poetics of Revolution
This event considers US surrealist poetics. How do contemporary practitioners grow from, resist, or reenvision André Breton’s 1920s movement? What does it mean to be surrealist amidst the postmodern horror of climate collapse, hyperrealist global warfare, and the absurdity of the twenty-four-hour news cycle? Witness writers on the margins—women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+—adopt surrealist practice for personal and political expression, to engage its long-standing ideologies and revolutionize its anachronistic tactics. Speaker(s): Presenter: Will Alexander Presenter: Danielle Pafunda Moderator: C. Francis Fisher Presenter: Joyelle McSweeney Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 402AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T228 |
| Remembering What Is Vanishing: Poets on Ecology, History & Race
This panel explores aspects of erasure, evanescence, and loss, as in erasure of one’s identity and subjectivity through racial and historical lenses, as in the extinction of 150 species in an average day, and how poets can “knock on silence,” in the words of Chinese poet Lu Ji, so as to give voice to those rubbed out by ideology, history, and time, to reach across the void instead of staring into it and becoming monsters. Speaker(s): Moderator: Tony Barnstone Presenter: Angie Estes Presenter: Mark Irwin Presenter: Douglas Manuel Presenter: Lynne Thompson Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T235 |
| Podcast Guesting: How to Get Booked & Be a Great Guest
Podcast guesting is a great way to promote your book and grow your audience—but there’s an art both to getting booked and to being a great guest! This panel of award-winning podcast hosts and interviewers provides insights and strategies that will help you pitch yourself as a guest and be an engaging guest who gets invited back. Speaker(s): Presenter: Jia Rizvi Moderator: Annmarie Kelly-Harbaugh Presenter: Harriett Jernigan Presenter: Laura Davis Agents, Contracts, Contests & Marketing Panel Discussion Location: Room 411, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T239 Event Outline for Podcast Guesting_ How to Get Booked & Be a Great Guest.pdf |
| 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM PDT |
| Horny Poets: An Evening of Sexy Queer Poems
Location: Melody LA, 751 N Virgil Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90029 Join us for an evening of queer sex poems with brilliant poets, including Chen Chen, Donika Kelly, Sam Sax, Gabrielle Bates, T Bambrick, and more. Food will be available for purchase, and the reading will be followed by a gay dance party! Health & Safety Information: Contact: Mac Crane Offsite Location: Offsite |
| Writer to Writer Mentorship Program Reception
Celebrate twenty wonderful seasons of the Writer to Writer Mentorship Program! Former mentors and mentees are invited for a reunion and celebration. Bring a plus one, mingle with fellow participants and AWP staff, and enjoy a drink and some light fare. Reception Location: Olympic Room II, Third Floor, JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE Session Code: T253 |
| 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM PDT |
| #AWP25 Keynote Address with Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is an author and cultural critic whose writing is unmatched and widely revered. Her work garners international acclaim for its reflective, no-holds-barred exploration of feminism and social criticism. With a deft eye on modern culture, she brilliantly critiques its ebb and flow with both wit and ferocity. Words like “courage,” “humor,” and “smart” are frequently deployed when describing Gay. Her collection of essays, Bad Feminist, is universally considered the quintessential exploration of modern feminism. NPR named it one of the best books of the year, and Salon declared the book “trailblazing.” Her powerful debut novel, An Untamed State, was longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. In 2017, Gay released her bestselling memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, which was called “Luminous. . . . intellectually rigorous and deeply moving” by The New York Times. She also released her collection of short stories, Difficult Women. The Los Angeles Times says of the collection, “There’s a distinct echo of Angela Carter or Helen Oyeyemi at play; dark fables and twisted morality tales sit alongside the contemporary and the realistic.” This event will take place in person in the Los Angeles Convention Center and will be livestreamed for virtual audiences. The livestreamed keynote address will include open captions and ASL interpretation. Speaker(s): Presenter: Roxane Gay Featured Livestreamed Event Live Captioned Assistive Listening Available ASL Interpreted Location: Petree Hall D, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: T258 |
Friday, Mar 28, 2025 |
| 9:00 AM – 10:15 AM PDT |
| Women of a Certain Age on Sex & Death: “I Took the Lake Between My Legs”
In her poem “Morning Swim,” Maxine Kumin defies societal expectations that sexuality is exclusively for the young. In this reading, five award-winning poets aged from mid-forties to mid-seventies will share frankly erotic work that makes a bulwark of bodily sensuality against death, time, and our aging selves. Shoring these fragments against our ruins can be exhilarating, painful, or painfully funny. Sometimes it nurtures a rare and fierce flame, building beauty that lasts. Speaker(s): Moderator: Rebecca Foust Presenter: Ellen Bass Presenter: Susan Browne Presenter: Julia Levine Presenter: Mahogany Browne Poetry Readings Reading Location: Concourse Hall 153 ABC, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F114 Event Outline for Women of a Certain Age on Sex and Death FINAL 2-26-25.docx |
| The Art of Noticing in the Age of Disappearance
This panel brings together writers whose new works in various genres perform intense observations of the world. The panelists discuss how careful acts of noticing—as in poems devoted to an endangered mammal in Laos and Vietnam and in a novel that begins with a sick tree in a California garden—give them an entry to contend with environmental exploitation and human isolation. They ask, What are the limits of language in describing and repairing our relationship to nature and to one another? Speaker(s): Presenter: Marie Mutsuki Mockett Moderator: Brittany Torres Rivera Presenter: Harryette Mullen Presenter: Mai Der Vang Presenter: Robin Walter Multiple Literary Genres Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 403A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F116 Event Outline – The Art of Noticing in an Age of Disappearance.docx |
| Poetry & Climate: Building Eco-Resilience Through Poetry & Community Action
How can poetry build resilience during the climate crisis by connecting us to one another and the more-than-human world, while giving us courage to act? Poets for Science founder Jane Hirshfield and three other poets will share initiatives and collaborations that bring poetry to the most urgent and evolving needs of our time. This panel will showcase multimedia creations stemming from research-based and scientifically informed approaches to poetry that use innovative methods to build community. Speaker(s): Presenter: David Hassler Presenter: Kimberly Blaeser Presenter: Sean Hill Presenter: Jane Hirshfield Moderator: Nickole Brown Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 501ABC, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F127 Event Outline – 2025 Poetry & Climate- Building Eco-Resilience Through Poetry & Community Action.pdf |
| Eyes Wide: Exploring the Extended Ekphrastic
Ekphrasis—“adding commentary”—traditionally lets a poet meditate on a single work of art. But increasingly poets are upending and enlarging ekphrastic forms, extending the ekphrastic to include art practices, artist’s lives, and historic, familial, and personal archives. Extended ekphrastic touches other forms—autobiography, memoir, criticism, documentary poetry. In this panel, five poets with diverse working methods will examine the challenges and rewards of extending the frame. Speaker(s): Presenter: Allison Rollins Moderator: Tess Taylor Presenter: Victoria Chang Presenter: Tyree Daye Presenter: Dean Rader Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 503, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F130 Event Outline – Eyes Wide_ Exploring the Extended Ekphrastic.pdf |
| 10:35 AM – 11:50 AM PDT |
| Library of America & Rigoberto González Present: Latinx Poetry Then & Now
Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology is an unprecedented collection that brings together more than 180 poets whose work testifies to the multifaceted past and present of Latinx poetry—its linguistic inventiveness, and its critical reimagining of questions of exile, language, ancestry, identity, and place. In a reading and conversation moderated by editor Rigoberto González, four poets read from the anthology and discuss the ongoing impact of Latinx poetry on American literature. Speaker(s): Presenter: Brandon Som Moderator: Rigoberto González Presenter: Laurie Ann Guerrero Presenter: Alexandra Lytton Regalado Presenter: Eduardo Corral Poetry Readings Reading Location: Concourse Hall 150 ABC, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F138 |
| Dear Yusef: Quotes, Notes & Anecdotes For & About One Mr. Komunyakaa
Yusef Komunyakaa is not only one of the most influential poets of the last half century, but also one if its most beloved teachers and mentors. This panel features fellow poets, friends, and former students reading from the anthology gathered in his honor, Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters, and Poems, For and About One Mr. Komunyakaa. Speaker(s): Presenter: Didi Jackson Presenter: Adrian Matejka Presenter: Nicole Sealey Presenter: Deborah Paredez Moderator: John Murillo Tributes Panel Discussion Location: Room 402AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F142 |
| From Dusk till Dawn: Exploring Nocturnes & Aubades
Nature’s voltas, dusk and dawn are periods of tension, anticipation, and dramatic change. As poems of beginnings and endings, longing and leave-taking, dreamlike wonder and song, the nocturne and the aubade engage liminal spaces of possibility and transformation. How do poets harness the power of these twilight periods? How do they draw from the inherent tensions of these poetic modes? This panel will explore the complexity and abundant offerings, the push and pull of these evocative poems. Speaker(s): Presenter: Amorak Huey Presenter: Curtis L. Crisler Presenter: Tatiana Johnson-Boria Presenter: Kevin McKelvey Moderator: Amy Ash Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 404AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F145 Event Outline_From Dusk til Dawn_Exploring Nocturnes and Aubades.pdf |
| Making Meaning out of Work: The New American Labor Poetry
Labor—retail work, entrepreneurism—is entwined with the American Dream, shaping our values and informing our relationships with others. We equate our worth and identities to our jobs and may even reduce others to theirs. This panel features five poets who will discuss how poetry’s antagonism to capitalist structures can be a means to limit and expand personhood, as well as explore the impact of mechanization in daily life. How does writing about labor negotiate a poem’s aesthetics? Speaker(s): Presenter: Ama Codjoe Presenter: Edgar Kunz Presenter: Rosanna Oh Presenter: Joseph Rios Moderator: Joshua Gottlieb-Miller Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 501ABC, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F154 Event Outline – Making meaning out of work_ the New American Labor Poetry.docx |
| 12:10 PM – 1:25 PM PDT |
| Ecopoetics in a Time of Grief: Queer & Trans Perspectives
What is queer and trans about ecopoetics? In this panel, five poets—with intimate connections to LA—will respond to the conditions of our shared world. We’ll explore relationships between queer poetics, trans grief, colonial violence, and environmental justice to arrive at why we must queer our contact with a suffering planet and its communities. We’ll consider speculative aesthetics, prosody, and genre hybridity as forms of resistance—and as forms of engagement with bodies and climates in transition. Speaker(s): Presenter: Luther Hughes Moderator: Cass Donish Presenter: Elijah Guerra Presenter: Paul Tran Presenter: S Yarberry Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Concourse Hall 153 ABC, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F171 Event Outline_AWP 2025_Ecopoetics in a Time of Grief – Queer & Trans Perspectives.docx |
| The Sisterhoods: Friendship, Feminism, Lineage & Perseverance
Four feminist avant-garde poets will discuss how “the Sisterhood,” a network of black feminist writers and activists formed during the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, deeply informs how they think about their own self-identified lineages and contexts today. The panelists will share how the Sisterhood, as documented in a 1977 photograph taken at June Jordan’s home of writers and activists, catalyzed their contemporary enactment of a peer support system for black feminist avant-garde poetics. Speaker(s): Presenter: Patricia Jones Moderator: Jennifer Firestone Presenter: Tonya Foster Presenter: Erica Hunt Presenter: Harryette Mullen Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F177 |
| 1:45 PM – 3:00 PM PDT |
| The Personal Is Always Political
Confessional poetry and the phrase “The personal is political” have parallel histories. While some have claimed that autobiographical poetry is apolitical, that claim has always been fallacious—and never more so than in the poetry of the present. This panel gathers five poets to share their strategies for infusing even their most “private” or “interior” poems with their politics and their ethics, read brief examples of their own and others’ work, and engage the audience collaboratively. Speaker(s): Presenter: Tariq Luthun Presenter: Ally Ang Presenter: Jericho Brown Moderator: Sumita Chakraborty Presenter: Rachel Mennies Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F206 |
| How Do You Know When You’re Done? Poets on Revision
Are poems ever finished, or just abandoned? In this panel, five poets will explore the process of a single published poem, from initial inspiration and drafting, through the process of revision, and focus on the moment they decided their work was finished—if it ever was. Focusing on works that experienced deep and significant changes throughout their writing, this panel will explore the way revision can reveal hidden rooms within an initial draft, and examine the moments those revisions end. Speaker(s): Presenter: Megan Pinto Moderator: James Fujinami Moore Presenter: Diannely Antigua Presenter: Taneum Bambrick Presenter: Michael Dhyne Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 518, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F222 |
| 3:20 PM – 4:35 PM PDT |
| Though It May Look like Disaster: Poetic Forms to Save Your Life
Do poetic forms have lifesaving properties? Five poets will discuss how meter, rhyme, syllable count, and other constraints have been sources of constancy and control during personal and political upheaval: layoffs, death, addiction, religious trauma, racism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They will examine the healing power of classic forms—sonnet, abecedarian and #ceasefire haiku—as well as remixed/invented forms, and share how forms can be a balm for a writer’s (or reader’s) heartbreak. Speaker(s): Presenter: Melissa Fite Johnson Presenter: Matthew E. Henry Presenter: Ashley M. Jones Presenter: Faisal Mohyuddin Moderator: Marianne Kunkel Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Concourse Hall 151, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F227 |
| The Politics of Imagining: Poetry as Social Practice
The political dimension penetrates every intimate aspect of human life—who is allowed to love whom and on what terms, who lives, who dies. Yet, “the political” is often relegated to a subgenre rather than being seen as the primary field of experience out of which the poetic imagination arises. This panel considers poetry within “a web of other social practices historically weighted with enormous imbalances of power” (Rich) and argues for a liberatory poetics that centers political consciousness. Speaker(s): Moderator: Issam Zineh Presenter: Courtney Faye Taylor Presenter: Cindy Juyoung Ok Presenter: Solmaz Sharif Presenter: George Abraham Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F235 |
| Jack Gilbert: A Centennial Celebration
This panel celebrates the achievement and influence of American poet Jack Gilbert near the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. Born in Pittsburgh in February 1925, Gilbert became one of the most accomplished poets of his generation. Though he avoided the limelight, his impact on readers and poets of all types has been immense and has only grown since his death in 2012. In this tribute, five poets discuss the influence of Gilbert on their work and teaching, followed by a Q&A with the audience. Speaker(s): Moderator: Dan Albergotti Presenter: Terry Kennedy Presenter: David Kirby Presenter: Dorianne Laux Presenter: Crystal Williams Tributes Panel Discussion Location: Room 411, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F241 |
| The Intimate Podcast: A Path to Community
Members of The Hive Poetry Collective discuss the value of intimate conversations with poets on their weekly Santa Cruz radio show and podcast series. These conversations nurture community and their own poetic growth. Circumventing tribalism, the collective shares how their differences—identities, poetic tastes, interviewing techniques—are strengths. This woman-run collective in its sixth year will share examples and history, and conduct two lightning interviews of volunteer audience members. Speaker(s): Presenter: Dion O’Reilly Moderator: Farnaz Fatemi Presenter: Julia Chiapella Presenter: Julie Murphy Presenter: Roxi Power Publishing, Editing & Technology Panel Discussion Location: Room 515B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: F249 |
| 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM PDT |
| Diode Editions Reading!
Location: With Love Cafe,1969 S Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90007 Join Diode Edition authors for an evening of poetry and community! Featuring readings from Conor Bracken, Rosa Castellano, Dorothy Chan, Teow Lim Goh, Amorak Huey, Stephanie Niu, Rosanna Young Oh and Shabnam Piryaei! Contact: Rosa Castellano Offsite Location: Offsite |
| 8:30 PM – 10:00 PM PDT |
| PoemoftheWeek.com Presents!
Location: 1100 S Hope St, Los Angeles, CA 90015 PoemoftheWeek.com presents 8 fabulous poets reading from their latest collections of poetry. Readings by: Octavio Quintanilla, Alexis Sears, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Alexis Sears, Faylita Hicks, Allisa Cherry, Andrew Mcfadyen-Ketchum, and Taylor Franson-Thiel. Contact: Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum Offsite Location: Offsite |
Saturday, Mar 29, 2025 |
| 9:00 AM – 10:15 AM PDT |
| Forms of Grief: The Craft of Writing Elegiac Poetry
When writing contemporary elegies, how does utilizing a variety of forms—fixed, hybrid, broken, nonce, etc.—influence our individual poems, as well as our poetic projects as a whole? How do expressions of spirituality, sexuality, gender, and race intersect with elegiac forms? How can the act of writing poetry organize and provide structure for grief, if such a thing is even possible? Five poets discuss the intersection of craft, practice, and experience when writing in the elegiac mode. Speaker(s): Moderator: Kate Gaskin Presenter: Amanda Gunn Presenter: Carolina Hotchandani Presenter: Cintia Santana Presenter: Jim Whiteside Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Concourse Hall 153 ABC, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S114 |
| Feeling FATastic: The Poetics of Pleasure, Sexuality & Liberation
This panel explores the craft of writing fat pleasure and joy. Narratives about fat people often center harm—eating disorders, bullying, body shaming. These topics are important components of the fat experience, but reducing people to their trauma is ultimately dehumanizing. The panelists will discuss how to use sensory details, musicality, voice, lineation, and storytelling to write poems that celebrate the pleasures of eating, sexuality, embodiment, belonging. Speaker(s): Moderator: Claudia Cortese Presenter: Diamond Forde Presenter: Ysabel Y. González Presenter: Omotara James Presenter: Emilia Phillips Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S120 |
| Future Forms: Inventing Literary Forms for the Twenty-First Century
From the epic poem to the lyric essay, literary forms have often been used to reflect the spirit of their age. With the advent of AI and digital technologies, the way we imagine literary genre and poetic form is changing. Five award-winning writers will share their work and discuss the ways in which they have subverted traditional forms, blurred genres, incorporated technology into narrative, and invented new forms to reflect our contemporary moment. Speaker(s): Moderator: Kai Carlson-Wee Presenter: Kate Folk Presenter: Alexandria Hall Presenter: Keith Wilson Presenter: Hua Xi Multiple Literary Genres Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S121 |
| Dark-Lit Awakening: Rethinking the Lyric Moment
The lyric moment might be described as a moment of ecstatic awe when time stops. Rilke’s “You must change your life” comes to mind. But what about those time-stopping moments that feel hopeless or horrible? Regardless of labels like “triggering,” “brutal,” “confessional,” or “trauma-laden”—any emotion can conjure the lyric moment and possess its own beauty. We will discuss aspects of craft and attitude that—despite difficult content—facilitate the ignition of the lyric moment. Speaker(s): Moderator: Dion O’Reilly Presenter: Francesca Bell Presenter: Jessica Cuello Presenter: Farnaz Fatemi Presenter: Luke Johnson Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 502B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S128 event outline_ Dark-Lit Awakening_ Rethinking the Lyric Moment .docx |
| 10:35 AM – 11:50 AM PDT |
| A Tribute to Brenda Hillman: Meditations on a Radical Poet & Advocate
A formally innovative poet, Brenda Hillman writes poetry that pushes boundaries of lyricism using meditation, collage, and activism to interrogate the act of experimentation. A poet of possibilities, Hillman invokes the environment, politics, theory, and religion to “open the lyric” (Hillman). This panel will explore Hillman’s forty years of verse that has given contemporary American poetry new perspectives on form and craft, and will consider her contribution to teaching, poetry, and publishing. Speaker(s): Moderator: Rachel Morgan Presenter: Major Jackson Presenter: Suzanna Tamminen Presenter: Brian Teare Presenter: Rachel Richardson Tributes Panel Discussion Location: Room 403A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S144 |
| The Defiance of Pink Poetry Books
To see the world through rose-colored glasses means to have a positive outlook that may be naive or weak. But in a violent world, it is an act of defiance to choose love and joy over alienation and uncertainty. Celebrating titles that feature the color pink on their covers, poets will read work that highlights the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and identity, and discuss how pink came to be a prominent element of their book, and what the color means to them and their writing. Speaker(s): Presenter: Chen Chen Moderator: Xochitl Bermejo Presenter: Anatalia Vallez Presenter: Zefyr Lisowski Presenter: Cathy Linh Che Poetry Readings Reading Location: Room 405, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S147 |
| Spirit Work: Talking (with) Sacred Texts Through Poetry
Drawing upon inherited or chosen faith traditions as we face our contemporary world and its spiritual predicament, poets Sarah Ghazal Ali, Jessica Jacobs, Philip Metres, Angela Peñaredondo, and Pádraig ó Tuama will offer brief remarks and readings of poems (their own and others’) that wrestle with God and religion, the architecture of awe and belief, of grief and unbelief, offering new ways of thinking of poems as spiritual practice—through imaginative contemplation, midrash, and ritual. Speaker(s): Presenter: Jessica Jacobs Presenter: Angela Penaredondo Presenter: Sarah Ghazal Ali Moderator: Philip Metres Presenter: Padraig O Tuama Poetry Readings Reading Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S149 |
| Artistic Skill or Buzzkill? Grammar in the Poetry Workshop
This panel explores creative ways to introduce grammar conversations in the poetry workshop, with an emphasis not on prescriptive grammar but rather on empowering writers to establish their poems’ particular grammars through conventional or other means. Panelists will offer exercises and ideas for treating grammar as a set of aesthetic choices that underwrite a poet’s intentions and mitigate the disconnect that can occur between sentence and line, vision and execution, in poem drafts. Speaker(s): Moderator: Ellen McGrath Smith Presenter: Amy Ash Presenter: Karen Paul Holmes Pedagogy Panel Discussion Location: Room 411, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S153 |
| “Thou Hast Thy Music Too”: The Poetry of Aging
Every life stage offers unique challenges and possibilities and, as Keats wrote in “To Autumn,” its particular music. Aging brings its dilemmas: accentuation of losses, bodily and mental impairments, diminishing time. These same challenges are grist for new perspectives, wisdom, and awareness of the temporal and the enduring. In this panel, four poets (of a certain age) will speak to different aspects of aging as a stage of life lived in and with poetry. A younger poet will also reflect on age. Speaker(s): Moderator: Owen Lewis Presenter: Cornelius Eady Presenter: Carlie Hoffman Presenter: Linda Susan Jackson Presenter: Myra Shapiro Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 502B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S156 |
| Poetry of Empathy & the Art of Resistance & Dissent
We’re living in a time marred by existential crises, such as wars, genocides, famine, pandemics, mass migration, and climate change. We face ideological differences, and racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination. Activism has become part of daily life, with protests common in public places and educational institutions. Yet, lasting solutions evade us. What are we lacking, and how are writers, poets, and activists responding? The panel “Poetry of Empathy & the Art of Resistance & Dissent” will discuss all. Speaker(s): Presenter: Askold Melnyczuk Moderator: Kalpna Singh-Chitnis Presenter: Beau Beausoleil Presenter: Richard Modiano Writers’ Conferences & Centers Panel Discussion Location: Room 518, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S162 Poetry of Empathy and the Art of Resistance and Dissent, AWP 2025.pdf |
| 12:10 PM – 1:25 PM PDT |
| Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift
The editor Kristie Frederick Daugherty and some of the poets included in the poetry anthology Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift (Random House, 2024) will be present to answer questions and discuss their poems, as well as read a few selected poems. Speaker(s): Bookfair Stage Event Moderator: Kristie Frederick Daugherty Poetry Readings Bookfair Stage Location: Bookfair Stage, West Hall A, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S164 |
| Poetry of the West with Red Hen Press
Will Alexander, Peggy Shumaker, Alison Hawthorne Deming, and Harryette Mullen: We feasted, we cried, we wept for our ancestors, and for the ancestors who lived on these lands and for our children, and we wrote the poetry of remembrance and laughter and forgetting and of writing new stories. The narrative of the West is being rewritten by these poets. We write ourselves into a new story. Read our presenters’ full bios. This event will take place in person in the Los Angeles Convention Center and will be livestreamed for virtual audiences. All livestreamed events include open captions. Speaker(s): Presenter: Will Alexander Presenter: Harryette Mullen Moderator: Kate Gale Presenter: Peggy Shumaker Presenter: Alison Hawthorne Deming Poetry Craft & Criticism Featured Livestreamed Event Live Captioned Assistive Listening Available Location: Petree Hall C, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S165 |
| 1:45 PM – 3:00 PM PDT |
| Breaking All the Rules: Ungoverning the Contemporary Sex Poem
Reflecting on sex and literature, Melissa Febos writes, “When something seems difficult, in writing and in life, we tend to make rules around it.” But rules were made to be broken—or reinvented—and this panel will share strategies for writing poems that push back against cultural norms that attempt to govern sex on and off the page, as well as the ways that allowing a fuller sexual existence into our poems can create more space for explorations of humor, grief, play, and even our deepest rage. Speaker(s): Moderator: Keetje Kuipers Presenter: Chen Chen Presenter: Luther Hughes Presenter: Erika Meitner Presenter: Eric Tran Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 403A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S198 Event Outline Breaking All the Rules Un-governing the Contemporary Sex Poem.pdf |
| Out in Public: Five LGBTQ+ Poets on Writing at One of the Oldest Pride Parades
West Hollywood is an LGTBQ+ sanctuary city and in 2019 became the first city to sponsor poets at their Pride parade to interview participants and write poems based on their stories. These five poets representing LA’s diverse identities, including city poet laureates, examine queer community organizing through poetry. This combination discussion panel and reading will pair poems exploring poetry’s ability to hold space where trauma is prevalent and joy and delight are desperately needed. Speaker(s): Moderator: Brian Sonia-Wallace Presenter: Jireh Deng Presenter: Jose Rios Presenter: Carla Sameth Presenter: Victor Yates Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 411, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S208 |
| 3:20 PM – 4:35 PM PDT |
| Resistance, Refusal, Silence & Life: When We Don’t Write
Fallow periods are a feature of almost every poet’s practice. Sometimes procrastination, or balking, out of fear; sometimes the result of a lack of faith in the outcome, or in the endeavor itself; and sometimes an active choice, these fallow periods can be fraught or can be useful. Four quite different poets—in backgrounds, ages, and approaches—discuss how silences have figured in their writing lives and, in some cases, have been used to their works’ advantage. Speaker(s): Presenter: Gregory Pardlo Presenter: Bianca Stone Moderator: Susan Wheeler Presenter: Sophie Cabot Black Presenter: Roger Reeves Poetry Craft & Criticism Panel Discussion Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S230 |
| The Poetics of Grief: Private to Public
From Catullus to Creeley, from Dickinson to Audre Lorde, poets have always used their art to lament the outrage of death. In this panel, five innovative poets read from recent works that trouble the border between the private sorrow of losing a loved one and the public grief over climate catastrophe, gun violence, and war. How do our personal losses press up against larger systemic crises? How does lament turn to demand, cry to outcry? Speaker(s): Moderator: Julie Carr Presenter: Quenton Baker Presenter: Serena Chopra Presenter: Gillian Conoley Presenter: Erica Lewis Poetry Readings Reading Location: Room 411, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Session Code: S234 |
| 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM PDT |
| The LA Poetry Party
Location: Prank Bar, 1100 S Hope St, Los Angeles, CA 90015 The Nashville Poetry Party presents…the LA POETRY PARTY, featuring celebrations of and readings by Rueben Quesada, Monica Prince, Saddiq Dzukogi, Anders Carlson-Wee, Sara Borjas, Meghan Merchant, Joseph Rios, Luke Johnson, Dorsey Craft Olbiech, Tomas Morin, Alexis Roan Fancher, Saul Hernández, Jose Olivares. Hosted by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, Karen Carr, and Gerard Robledo. Presented by PoemoftheWeek.com and The Nashville Poetry Party Contact: Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, Karen Carr, & Gerard Robledo Offsite Location: Offsite |
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