Panel Participants: Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, Jeffrey Dale Lofton, Chris Dennis, Sasha Vasilyuk, Maria Kuznetsova Description: Five prize-winning authors will lead a discussion on crafting autobiographical novels/stories versus memoirs/personal essays. They will talk about the differences and similarities between fiction and nonfiction, what determines a writer’s initial narrative choice, and the challenges writers encounter while writing from their own experiences about cultural heritage, trauma, disability, violence, and sexual abuse. Download event outline and supplemental documents ..read more

Panel Participants: Candace Walsh, Nicole Walker, Anna Chotlos, Sarah Minor Description: How is the braided essay form innately subversive, in realms of interiority, the classroom, society? It can be a “social justice action” for marginalized/minoritized writers; an assertion of queer lives’ complexities; a feminist refusal of linear hero’s journeys; and a way for students to weave empowering threads (i.e., memoir, research, cultural critique) together in one piece. Three innovative essayists who also teach will showcase braided essays’ dynamic, hegemony-undermining possibilities. Download ev ..read more

Panel Participants: Jen Soriano, Julie Marie Wade, Constance Collier-Mercado, Barrie Jean Borich, Marco Wilkinson Description: Conventional approaches to nonfiction emphasize single stories, linear revelations, and verifiable facts, but pressure to conform to familiar narrative modalities can silence those who write from marginalized and non-normative perspectives. In this panel, five writers of hybrid and intersectional nonfiction discuss how their work disrupts norms, shatters singular narratives, and complicates facts—embracing instead the power of blended genres, multiple identities, and ..read more

Panel Participants: Daisy Hernandez, Sue William Silverman, Dinty W Moore, Ira Sukrungruang, Jill Christman Description:  The use of a constructed persona in the essay hails from Montaigne, but persona in memoir is more complicated. If memoirists are telling the honest truth of ourselves, is it ever truthful to hide behind a mask? How can a memoirist be honest and artful at the same time? This panel of award-winning memoirists will explore the intricate braid of voice, style, point-of-view, emotional authenticity, and narrative design to see if we really can tell the ..read more

What does a twenty-one year old woman growing up in Moorhead, Minnesota, a town best known for an often-flooding north flowing river, have in common with a twenty-year-old woman who lived a movie-like lifestyle in New York? Not much. “…was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was.” Joan Didion, in her 1967 essay “Goodbye to All That,” describes what it was like to live as a young woman in New York City. An outsider herself, Didion’s essay hinges on the idea that New York is a place for the “very young.” At twenty, Didion’s time in the city slips by with “the deceptive ease ..read more

Let us know in the comments which panel you’d like to cover and we’ll be in touch! We request virtual panel reports by Monday, February 12 so that we may promote the panels as close to the conference as possible. Thank you for your consideration. Wednesday, February 7, 2024 V101. VIRTUAL: Autistic Writers On The Inaccessibility Of Professional Writing Spaces ( Chris Martin, Zaji Cox, Julia Lee Barclay-Morton, Said Shaiye) Five Autistic writers consider what it means to be excluded from professional writing spaces. Many Autistic people struggle with sensory overwhelm; this ..read more

Let us know in the comments which panel you’d like to cover and we’ll be in touch! Saturday, February 10, 2024 S122. Rebel Voices Only (Deborah Taffa, G’Ra Asim, Lamya H, Inara Verzemnieks) Hear from writers who pen “the voice of resistance.” Poet Alice Notley has famously said, “It’s necessary to maintain a state of disobedience against … everything.” Essayist Phillip Lopate has identified “the curmudgeon.” There are many reasons to be disobedient in memoir, essays, reportage, and criticism—to raise awareness, to shine light on buried histories, to give voice to impassioned ap ..read more

Let us know in the comments which panel you’d like to cover and we’ll be in touch! Friday, February 9, 2024 F112. Queer Architectures: New Models for Memoir (Alden Jones, Zoë Sprankle, Putsata Reang, Kirsten Imani Kasai) Queer stories break from traditional norms, so why wouldn’t their narrative shapes do the same? As our canon of queer memoir expands, memoir as a genre continues to open itself to experimental architectures that amplify narrative possibilities for all nonfiction writers. Three queer memoirists draw from their own work as well as the writers they love to explore the ..read more

Let us know in the comments which panel you’d like to cover and we’ll be in touch! Thursday, February 8, 2024 T127. The Language of Leaving: Puerto Rican Writers on/from the Diaspora (Claudia Acevedo-Quinones, Amina Gautier, Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, Jerilynn Aquino) Puerto Rico has long been a rich source of stories for those within and without its borders. This panel, composed of writers of Puerto Rican descent working in fiction, memoir, and other creative nonfiction, will focus on the challenges of writing about home, sometimes in another language, from the perspective of an ..read more

Going to the 2024 AWP conference in Kansas City? We’re looking for guest bloggers to write up reports on the panels, because, as always, we expect our cloning abilities to malfunction. We’ll post the schedule of panels over the next few days and if you’d like to claim a panel to write about, let us know in the comments (and we’ll cross it off our list here). What to Write: We’re looking for a summary of the panel/panelists, poignant quotes, and personal reactions–aim for 500-700 words. The goal is to give those who aren’t there a good idea of what went on. These reports are also a w ..read more