The BOA team is excited to once again be participating in the AWP Conference and Book Fair! This year's conference will be held in San Antonio, TX, on March 4-7 at the Henry B. González Convention Center. Stop by Booth 1429 for author signings, submission information, special AWP discounts on select BOA titles, and more!
BOA Author Signing Schedule:
Thursday, March 5th
Diana Marie Delgado, author of Tracing the Horse: 11 AM to 12 PM
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, author of Cenzontle: 2 PM to 3 PM
Deborah Paredez, author of Year of the Dog: 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM
Friday, March 6th
Matt Morton, author of Improvisation Without Accompaniment: 11 AM to 12 PM
Rick Bursky, author of Let’s Become a Ghost Story: 1 PM to 2 PM
Kathryn Nuernberger, author of Rue: 2 PM to 3 PM
Saturday, March 7th
Naomi Shihab Nye, author of The Tiny Journalist: 11 AM to 12 PM
John Gallaher, author of Brand New Spacesuit: 1 PM to 2 PM
Panels & Readings Featuring BOA Authors:
Thursday, March 5th
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Topic: “This Possibility of You": Bi+ Visibility in Poetry
Location: Room 302, Henry B. González Convention Center, Ballroom Level
Time: 9:00 AM to 10:15 AM
Description: June Jordan’s “Poem for My Love” marvels in “this possibility of you,” the ungendered beloved. This panel will explore the complex possibilities for the ways that bi+ sexualities—that is, any nonmonosexuality—are rendered and/or erased in poetry and the literary community. What defines a bi+ poetics? We will look at historic and contemporary examples, and participants will discuss the ways they intersectionally engage bi+ desire, identity, and experiences in their own writings.
Erika Meitner
Topic: The Futures of Documentary and Investigative Poetries
Location: Room 217B, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Time: 10:35 AM to 11:50 AM
Description: Investigative or documentary poetry situates itself at the nexus between literary production and journalism, where the mythic and factual, the visionary and political, and past and future all meet. From doing recovery projects to performing rituals of healing to inventing forms, panelists will share work (their own and others') and discuss challenges in docupoetic writing and its futures: the ethics of positionality, appropriation, fictionalizing, collaboration, and political engagement.
Deborah Paredez
Topic: Women Writing War: A Poetics Discussion and Poetry Reading
Location: Room 210A, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Time: 12:10 PM to 1:25 PM
Description: "War," Muriel Rukeyser writes, "has been in my writing since I began." This panel showcases five female poets whose work transforms the category of "war poetry." How have their encounters with war and its effects shaped their formal, linguistic, and aesthetic choices? How have they addressed the ethics of representing depictions of violence? Panelists include daughters of Vietnam War refugees and veterans, a mother of a son deployed in Afghanistan, and a feminist scholar of the poetics of war.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Topic: Dear America Part 1, Presented by Trinity University Press and Terrain.org
Location: The University of Texas at Austin Stage, Exhibit Halls 3-4, Henry B. González Convention Center
Time: 12:10 PM to 1:25 PM
Description: Trinity University Press and Terrain.org present Dear America. America is at a crossroads. Conflicting political and social perspectives reflect a need to collectively define our moral imperatives, clarify cultural values, and inspire meaningful change. In that patriotic spirit, hundreds of writers, artists, scientists, and political and community leaders have come together since the 2016 presidential election to offer their impassioned letters to America, in a project envisioned by the online journal Terrain.org and collected in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. Moderated by Terrain.org.
Deborah Paredez
Topic: 10 Years of CantoMundo: Founders, Faculty, and Fellows
Location: HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Convention Center, Ballroom Level
Time: 1:45 PM to 3:00 PM
Description: Join CantoMundo for a discussion on contemporary Latinx letters, the history of CantoMundo, and what’s ahead for us. Each poet will also do a short reading.
Friday, March 6th
Piotr Florczyk
Topic: After the Siege: Writing War Truthfully.
Location: Room 214C, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Time: 9:00 AM to 10:15 AM
Description: “Grief,” writes Rebecca West, “is not the clear melancholy the young believe it. It is like a siege in a tropical city.” How, then, does one go about depicting a war and all of the grief it portends? Does one need to have detachment from the conflict? What role do memory and “survivor’s guilt” play? More broadly, what does it mean to be classified as a “war writer” or speak from the vantage point of a survivor? These are just some of the questions we ask in probing the challenges of war writing.
Geffrey Davis & Keetje Kuipers
Topic: Each One Teach One: Introducing New Writers to Literary Submission Procedures
Location: Room 217D, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Time: 10:35 AM to 11:50 AM
Description: It’s complicated. With so much anxiety about appearing in print, beginning writers’ negotiations with the submission process can be distressing. Questions must be answered: Why do I want to submit? Where do I submit? Am I ready to submit? What expectation should I have? The mysterious, frustrating and, nevertheless, important process of submitting manuscripts of all kinds will be debated and explained by professionals, all of whom have considered these questions as writers, editors, and teachers.
Kathryn Nuernberger
Topic: Science at the Source: Poetic Methods
Location: Room 006A, Henry B. González Convention Center, River Level
Time: 10:35 AM to 11:50 AM
Description: Is poetry science? What happens when poets engage research and adopt strategies of scientific inquiry? Five poets will discuss the influence of science on their craft (observation, form, and discovery), and also as a method of investigating truth. We will demonstrate how studying the intricacies of our natural world offers new insight on the image-less territories of the interior and how poetry can make our complex, shared reality penetrable and knowable in ways science by itself cannot.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Topic: Not-So-Lone Stars: A Reading by Texas State University MFA Faculty Poets
Location: Room 304, Henry B. González Convention Center, Ballroom Level
Time: 12:10 PM to 1:25 PM
Description: Permanent faculty poets from the Texas State University MFA Program in Creative Writing read their work.
Mary Crow
Topic: "Geometry of Air": The Visionary Poetry of Ulalume González de León
Location: The Michener Center for Writers Stage, Exhibit Halls 3-4, Henry B. González Convention Center
Time: 1:45 PM to 3:00 PM
Description: Ulalume González de León (1928-2009) was born in Uruguay and became a Mexican citizen in 1948. Her friend and colleague Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz called González de León “the best Mexicana poet since Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz." Translators and scholars will read and discuss the work of this innovative and visionary poet from the collection Plagios/Plagiarisms, just released from Sixteen Rivers Press.
Jan-Henry Gray
Topic: Undocupoets Read!
Location: Room 006D, Henry B. González Convention Center, River Level
Time: 1:45 PM to 3:00 PM
Description: This panel explores the diversity of undocumented poets and their challenges of moving through the literary world—from the deeply internal work of writing from a self whose presence is contested, to applying to institutions that demand proof of residency in order to participate in the poetic discourse. Poets will read their work, and discuss how their status has informed their craft and the particular aesthetic concerns of writing about, through, and in spite of documentation.
Jillian Weise
Topic: New Suns: Afrofuturist and Cyborg Aesthetics
Location: Room 214B, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Time: 1:45 PM to 3:00 PM
Description: Octavia Butler writes, “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” Taking a cue from Butler—Afrofuturist and disabled writer—this panel will discuss and demonstrate some new suns. What can a poem do in the 21st century? What is the strange new grammar of screens? How do we create and conscript images for activism? Panelists work in multiple genres including creative nonfiction, mixed media, performance, and poetry.
Craig Morgan Teicher
Topic: Of Two Minds: Editors Who Are Writers
Location: Room 006A, Henry B. González Convention Center, River Level
Time: 3:20 PM to 4:35 PM
Description: The relationship between writers and editors is as storied as the history of publishing itself. An editor must be able to subsume one’s own voice in order to attend to another’s. Yet there are creative benefits to the writer who also edits. What is the overlap between writing and editing? What does it take to function effectively as both a writer and an editor? In this panel, contemporary writers who are also editors will discuss the practice of being of two minds: editorial and authorial.
Saturday, March 7th
Geffrey Davis, Keetje Kuipers & Erika Meitner
Topic: Beyond the Brady Bunch: Reinventing the Poem of the American Family
Location: Room 217C, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Time: 9:00 AM to 10:15 AM
Description: While poets have long delved into the complications of rendering family on the page, it can be challenging to navigate poems in the vein of parental devotion or childhood trauma when our families break the traditional mold. Whether caring for aging parents or raising kids, these narratives remain utterly familiar while their specifics—queer parents, neurodiverse children, transracial adoption—have never felt so varied. How do we find new ways to write the new families so many of us belong to?
John Gallaher
Topic: Keep the Press Open: The Future of Print Journals
Location: Room 008, Henry B. González Convention Center, River Level
Time: 10:35 AM to 11:50 AM
Description: Why do literary magazines stay in print when online journals are cheaper to produce/distribute and easier to link to via social media? Won't all literature be electronic in 100 years? Editors from print journals across the country will discuss the importance of the physical magazine and their decision to continue to produce printed artifacts for their contributors and subscribers despite rising costs in production and shipping, and the ever-present threat of funding cuts.
Dan Albergotti
Topic: Essential Contemporary Texts in the Classroom: Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard
Time: 1:45 PM to 3:00 PM
Location: Room 006C, Henry B. González Convention Center, River Level
Description: Trethewey received the Pulitzer Prize for Native Guard, and those of us who teach it know why: in terms of its content; formal architectures; and historical, cultural, and racial underpinnings, the collection represents a trove of value in the classroom, a collection remarkable for its textured approach to matters of race, identity, historical erasure, memory, and grief. This panel, comprised of poets who regularly teach the book, will provide insight and strategies for teaching it.
Adam Giannelli
Topic: On the Road Again: Authors Planning and Surviving a Book Tour
Location: Room 007B, Henry B. González Convention Center, River Level
Time: 1:45 PM to 3:00 PM
Description: The book tour used to be a staple of the writing life—a 20-city tour, expenses paid, nice hotels, name in lights, etc. But the market has radically changed. Now, most authors should be prepared to coordinate many of their own events and pay for their own expenses. The writers on this panel will discuss how they cobbled together their own tours, funded them, and juggled a tour with a job. They also will discuss the benefit and pitfalls of the DIY tour and what they would and wouldn’t do again.
Adam Giannelli
Topic: Disabled Voices: Disfluent Writers Speak
Location: Lila Cockrell Theatre, Henry B. González Convention Center, Street Level
Time: 3:20 PM to 4:35 PM
Description: Sound and voice are vital elements of prose and poetry. Writers with speech disabilities (cerebral palsy, stuttering, and dystonia) discuss how their speaking voices have influenced their writing. This panel explores how vocal difference can serve as a catalyzing force in form, content, and performance across many genres, and discusses the realities of public speaking and publishing as a writer with a disability. Writers talk about their processes and make recommendations for further reading.
Off Site Events:
Thursday March 5
Chen Chen
Event: One Page Salon
Location: 723 S Alamo St, San Antonio, TX 78205
Time: 9:30 PM to 10:30 PM
Description: One of Austin's most beloved reading series—One Page Salon—is traveling to San Antonio with the Writers' League of Texas for a special evening of quick readings, slow drinking, and lots of literary shenanigans. One Page Salon (called "the best literary evening in town" by the Austin American-Statesman) is the brainchild of novelist, screenwriter, and comedian Owen Egerton. Five outstanding writers will read one page from a work in progress, including Chen Chen, Kelli Jo Ford, Manuel Gonzales, Lacy Johnson, and Wayétu Moore. The hilarious Egerton will emcee.
Deborah Paredez
Event: Book Launch & Benefit Reading with Lisa Olstein
Location: Presa House Gallery, 725 S Presa, San Antonio TX 78210
Time: 7 PM to 8:30 PM
Description: Come celebrate the launch of Deborah Paredez's Year of the Dog (BOA, April 2020) and Lisa Olstein's Pain Studies (Bellevue Literary Press, March 2020) at the Presea House Gallery. Food, drinks, art, and good cheer will be provided. All book sale proceeds will benefit RAICES.
Friday March 6
Molly Reid
Event: Strange Theater: A Fabulist Reading
Location: Cherrity Bar (Pavilion Area), 302 Montana St, San Antonio, TX 78203
Time: 9:00 PM to 10:30 PM
Description: Join us for a lively reading by writers who call the weird, magical, and surreal their stomping grounds. Some magical intermission events will be had (a raffle of signed books and other odd goodies) and books will also be available for purchase. Hosted by Sequoia Nagamatsu and featuring Kurt Baumeister, Dana Diehl, Kendra Fortmeyer, Rochelle Hurt, Chloe Clark, Chris Santiago, Jennifer Wortman, Molly Reid, Zach Vandezande, Ruth Joffre, Nay Saysourinho, and Bonnie Jo Stufflebeem.