The AWP Diaries: Saturday, March 11

Welcome to The AWP Diaries, a glance into Publisher Cindy DiTiberio’s first AWP conference experience. Each day this week, we’ll share a bit about what a single day looked like when she was at AWP last week. Here’s a look at her final day:

8:00am Up and eat a quick protein bar before heading over to the Convention Center to pick the winners for our drawing and make it to a 9am panel.

9:00-10:15am Panel: Neither the Madonna nor Mommy Dearest: Why and How to Write Real Mothers. Jeanette Ouellette, Ronit Plank, Hyeseung Song, Michelle Yang, and Gina Frangello discuss how to depict difficult mothers in writing and how to not demonize but also not sugarcoat real experiences with our mothers.

10:35-11:50am Panel: Writing About Kith and Kin: Dos & Don’ts, Rights & Wrongs, Risks & Rewards. Alison Hong Merrill, Jody Keisner, Jennifer Lang, Thea Rademacher, and Helena Rho discuss the legal ramifications of writing about real people, including how to determine when to change names, publish under a pen name, and other things to consider before putting your true story out into the world.

11:45am: Leave early to grab some food down in the book fair before heading to yet another panel

12:10-1:25pm Panel: The Intersection of Art and Revenue: Writing for Literary and Mainstream Outlets. Literary Mama’s Senior Editor Rudri Bhatt Patel, Windy Lynn Harris, Sharon Van Epps, Julie Vick and Rachel Mans McKenney talk about how to balance the creative writing the fuels your creativity with the kind of writing that pays the bills and how to balance the two.

1:30-3:00pm Man the Literary Mama table. Susan Ito, former Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction Editor and author of the column “Life in the Sandwich,” swings by to say hi!

3:20-4:35pm Panel: The Art of Infertility: Writing About Reproductive Choice, Loss and Family. Krys Malcolm Belc, Jennifer Berney, Cheryl Klein, Carla Sameth, and Robin Silbergleid read from the forthcoming anthology Infertilities: A Curation and discuss rewriting the dominant family narratives.

4:40pm Go down to the booth to say goodbye to Jenny who is packing everything up

5:00pm Head to hotel where I Facetime my kids

5:30pm a friend and I walk to a sushi restaurant down by Pike’s Place Market

6:45pm I walk with her to her friend’s reading but I am toast so I walk back to the hotel. I am so glad I have come but am worried about how I will travel home with the seven books I purchased.