AWP Recap--Part One

I got back from the AWP late Monday, but I came back sick and got sicker once home. So I haven’t managed to dig through all the email and mail and haven’t put up a blog post. Since I’ve received many photos from AWP, I thought I'd put up a little illustrated recap (which will take two days and blog posts). Then, on Monday, I will review Fred Arroyo’s new book of short fiction for the Books of Interest by Writers of Color series, getting back on track.

We got into Chicago late Wednesday afternoon and checked into the Hilton, picked up our registration for the conference, and began setting up the book tables. Ben had the two BkMk and New Letters tables to set up. My publisher and book table partner, Luis J. Rodriguez, and I set up the combined Tia Chucha Press/ Scapegoat Press table.

Here, my friend and publisher, Luis J. Rodriguez, and I sit down at the finished Tia Chucha Press/Scapegoat Press table. Once the AWP authorities chased us out of the book fair, we left for a nearby restaurant, Rhapsody, for the 25^th anniversary dinner of Tia Chucha Press authors. 

 

It was great to see old friends like Carlos Cumpian and LJR and to meet new ones such as Michael Warr, Patricia Smith, Patricia Spears Jones, Dwight Okita, and Luivette Resto. We had lots of fun and carried on until late. HIGHLIGHT: Patricia Spears Jones giving a “reading” of the rather pretentious dessert menu that had us in stitches. I have got to attend one of this woman’s poetry readings!

Here I am with Patricia Spears Jones, lovely NYC poet.

Next morning, the conference was on and the book fair opened. I was excited because we were displaying our newest Scapegoat Press book, Woven Voices: 3 Generations for Puertorriqueñas Look at their American Lives. I edited this anthology and am very proud of it. There’s really no book like this out there on the market.

The gorgeous cover got lots of attention from passersby, and a surprising number stopped and let me tell them about this unique book, which is a conversation in poetry among three members of a gifted Puerto Rican family—grandmother Anita Vélez-Mitchell, mother Gloria Vando, daughter Anika Paris. The book began to sell steadily, reviewers asked for copies, and I was a happy camper--even though I was missing all the conference panels.

I missed all the panels I wanted to go to because I was caught at the book table. I didn't make a panel until my own on the last day. 

There was a Celebration of Tia Chucha Press, my publisher.

Here’s Luivette (“I live in LA, but I’m from New York”) Resto after the Celebration of Tia Chucha Press.

 

My friend Francisco Alarçon was on a number of panels I would love to have attended but had to miss.

Still, thousands of people came through the book fair, and I had a chance to talk with many of them. Such a wild variety of people! What a feast of character for a novelist! Of course, it helps that I believe so strongly in all the books I was selling, both Scapegoat's and Tia Chucha's.

Thursday ended with Luis coming to take my place so I could hurry over to the Ragdale reception where I was a co-host. I'll post photos from that and the rest of the conference tomorrow.

Catching Up—Las Comadres, AWP, Woven Voices

Las Comadres is a 25-year-old national organization that brings Latinas together through email, teleconferences, and in person to engage in dialogues around culture and other aspects of life. They have a national series of teleconferences in which their members all around the nation discuss books they've read with their authors--Las Comadres Conversations With...   

And Every Last Secret has been selected for one of these conversations in May!

This is a real honor, and I’m very excited. This is a great organization that's doing such essential work in many ways, but especially promoting reading and literature this way. So I’m really looking forward to my teleconference with these bright, inquiring Latina minds!

Right now, I’m getting ready to head to the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) national conference for a crazy, hectic week. I’ll be co-hosting the Ragdale reception on Thursday evening at the Cliff Dwellers, and I hope to read at the Guild Complex/Tia Chucha Press reading afterward—if I’m not too physically worn out by then. Then, on Friday night, I will read with the Latino Writers Collective and  Proyecto Latina at Columbia College Chicago in one of the off-site readings. With our great Chicago friends, the damas of Proyecto Latina, we hope to put a distinctive Midwestern spin on this national celebration of the written word.

I will also be on a panel with fellow Latino Writers Collective members on Saturday from 3:00-4:15 pm that will discuss our experiences with offering writing workshops to the children of migrant farm workers. This has been such a fruitful and satisfying project for the Collective, and the feedback says that we’ve really made a change in these young people’s lives. We’ll talk about how we started and how other groups could do something similar in their areas.

I will be working at the Tia Chucha Press/Scapegoat Press table (B12, like the vitamin) in the bookfair much of the time I’m at the conference. I’ll have ARCs of Every Last Secret with its gorgeous cover top show off to any of my friends who visit me.

 I hope everyone will also check out the dynamite new book I edited—Woven Voices: 3 Generations of Puertorriqueñas Look at their American Lives. This book braids a conversation of poetry among three very different but truly related poets, Anita Velez-Mitchell, grandmother and mother, Gloria Vando, mother and daughter, and Anika Paris, daughter and granddaughter.  

Ruth Behar, author of An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba says, “Woven Voices is like no other poetry book! Here is a gorgeous trio of poets, a grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter who share family ties, a common Puerto Rican history, and the twists and turns of a diasporic journey. Each speaking in her own unique voice, Anita, Gloria, and Anika write with honesty and tenderness about the big themes of home and mortality as well as about everyday lessons and losses. Read the poems together and separately and you'll find yourself singing along, entering a world of beauty and truth you didn't know existed.”

On Thursday here in the Literary Mystery Novelists series, you can read an interview with Rhys Bowen, author of two current mystery series plus an earlier one that have won many awards. An extra bonus if you’re jones-ing for a Downton Abbey fix—one series is set in that time period among Britain’s aristocracy.

Then, on Monday, we’ll return to the Books of Interest by Writers of Color series, and midweek I’ll try to post another installment of the series on Juggling the Two Jobs of Writing Novels and Promoting Books.