What poets were born or have lived in Topeka, Kansas?

Comment below if you know of more:

Gwendolyn Brooks

Kevin Young

Cyrus Console

Bret DeFries

Margaret Hill McCarter

Miranda Ericsson-Kendall

Michael Robbins

Langston Hughes

Gary Jackson

Ronald Johnson

Sarah Mangold

Stella Robbins

CA Conrad

Anne Boyer

Dana Holt

Ben Lerner

Ed Skoog

Eric McHenry

Israel Wasserstein

Sarah Green

Matthew Porubsky

Tod Marshall

Nick Twemlow

Ben Cartwright

Amy Fleury

Leah Sewell

Melissa Sewell

Timothy Volpert

Andy Carter

Thomas C Kennedy

Annette Billings

Naomi Shihab Nye: conceived in Topeka

Denise Low-Weso: taught at Washburn

Santa Narratives

Narration involves first Santa, a succession of Santas, a family of Santas, or the temporary manifestation of Santa.

Santa develops temporary amnesia due to falling off a roof or being shot down by forest creatures.

Obstacles include: one child is missed on toy delivery route, all children will be missed on toy delivery route, delivered toys are stolen or malfunction.

March 9, 2013; AWP Boston

9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.

Room 202, Level 2

S115. Teaching Mutt Lit: Genre-Benders, Hybrids, and Other Weirdness in the Creative Writing Classroom. (Ruth Ellen Kocher, Jeanine Deibel, blake nemec, Vanessa Villarreal, Kelsie Hahn) This panel will explore nontraditional and hybrid literary forms as a means of developing craft, generating voice, and discovering a broader palette of reading and writing interests. Members will present approaches to teaching a variety of forms, including flash fiction, prose poetry, mixed-media, online and interactive text, and lyric essay, in addition to multi-genre work. We will also address resistance to unconventional structures and how to overcome these challenges in the classroom.

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Room 203, Level 2

S116. The Art of Losing. (Reese Okyong Kwon, Elliott Holt, Jennine Capó Crucet, Meghan O’Rourke, Alexander Chee) Leonard Michaels wrote about his wife, Sylvia, Edwidge Danticat wrote about Haiti, and Henry James wrote about his cousin, Minny. Many writers, after losing the people and places they love, have translated their grief into prose. For those of us who find that profound personal loss has informed our writing, what concerns and challenges have we encountered? What are potential pitfalls, and are there any consolations? Join us as we share our perspectives and read from our work.

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Room 206, Level 2

S118. Literary Nonfiction and Social Activism. (Helene Atwan, Marianne Leone, David Chura, Courtney Martin) This panel explores the craft of writing nonfiction that is both literary and socially relevant. Panelists include writers who, while seeking to make significant contributions to the national conversation on the issues they are writing about, are first and foremost writers of literary nonfiction. Writers and editors on the panel discuss ways to balance the political goals of the activist with the aesthetic imperatives of literary writing and the financial demands of trade publishing.

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10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

Room 201, Level 2

S139. Feminism Meets Neo-Benshi: Movietelling Talks Back. (Sarah Rosenthal, Tracie Morris, Jennifer Firestone, Paolo Javier, Anne Waldman) Neo-benshi, also called movietelling, meets contemporary feminism in this panel where poets co-opt popular film and subvert its plots and purposes for their own. The panelists have rewritten film scripts to critique and respond to current social issues. Panelists will perform these short pieces, which explore Neo-benshi’s potential for feminist dialogue and collaboration as well as its capacity to talk back, as it were, to society at large.

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12:00 noon to 1:15 p.m.

Room 111, Plaza Level

S163. Memoir Beyond the Self. (Jeffrey Shotts, Leslie Jamison, Brigid Hughes, Benjamin Nugent, Colleen Kinder) This panel will focus on narrative nonfiction that pushes the boundaries of traditional memoir by weaving personal experience into broader explorations of literature, history, and culture. What are the possibilities for a precarious first person, neither oppressively dominant nor entirely dissolved? How can memoir escape the bind of solipsism by looking outward at other people, places, and eras? How can private life become a medium through which the external world is articulated?

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Room 210, Level 2

S173. Wesleyan Poetry Series Reading. (Stephanie Elliott, Rae Armantrout, Kazim Ali, Annie Finch, Jena Osman) Readings from the newest titles in the Wesleyan Poetry series. Rae Armantrout’s Just Saying continues her standard of inventive, tightly written verse. Spells: New and Collected Poems represents Annie Finch’s technical mastery and her illuminating response to the world. Kazim Ali’s carefully crafted Icarus is an ethereal meditation on the human spirit. Jena Osman’s Public Figures employs a hybrid form of poetry, prose, and found text to explore memory and remembrance in American culture.

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1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.

Room 111, Plaza Level

S190. Document-Based Sources of Inquiry. (Allison Wigen, Patricia Kirkpatrick, Sally Keith, Jody Gladding, Arlene Kim) Poets will discuss the ways in which document-based sources inform the writing process. Works of art, “texts” found in nature, brain maps, and fairy tales are among the “source documents” of interest to the panelists. Though art, nature, and narrative have inspired poets for centuries, in their recent works, these poets have utilized document-based sources in unexpected ways. This craft discussion will offer panel attendees fresh approaches to incorporating found sources into the writing process

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Room 306, Level 3

S204. How to Lose Friends and Alienate Loved Ones: Exploitation vs. Documentation in Creative Nonfiction. (B.J. Hollars, Roxane Gay, Marcia Aldrich, Ryan Van Meter, Bonnie J. Rough) Not every story is flattering, nor is every character. Nevertheless, nonfiction writers continue to document their lives and the lives of others, often at the risk of violating personal relationships. How should writers navigate between revealing the true nature of their subjects without alienating the people themselves? Join four writers as they explore the fine line between documentation and exploitation, among other ethical dilemmas inherent in writing of friends, family, and loved ones.

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8:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Hynes Ballroom, Level 3

S264. Academy of American Poets Presents Lucie Brock-Broido and Anne Carson. (Lucie Brock-Broido, Anne Carson, Jennifer Benka) Award-winning poet Lucie Brock-Broido, author of Trouble in Mind, and acclaimed poet, essayist, and translator Anne Carson, author of Autobiography of Red, present readings from their respective work to be followed by a discussion moderated by Jennifer Benka, Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets.

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10:00 p.m. to 12:00 midnight

Sheraton Boston Hotel, Constitution Ballroom, Level 2

S266. AWP Public Reception & Dance Party, Sponsored by Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department & Story Week. A dance party with music by DJ Neza. Free beer and wine from 10:00 to 11:00 p.m. Cash bar from 11:00 p.m. to midnight.

March 8, 2013; AWP Boston

9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.

Room 103, Plaza Level

F106. Post-Genre Lit: Form in the 21st Century. (Lacy M. Johnson, Nick Flynn, Lidia Yuknavitch, Kazim Ali, Stephen Elliott) An increasing body of literature not only blurs the boundaries between creative and critical, prose and verse, observation and invention, but also transcends and transgresses our most basic convictions about genre. Postgenre lit can alter our conversations about perception, experience, and reality; or it can kindle deep-seated animosities about the rules and limits of form. These divergent writers will discuss how they read, teach, write, and publish work that defies classification.

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Room 109, Plaza Level

F111. Poetry of Resistance: Poets Responding to Xenophobia and Injustice. (Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Carmen Calatayud, Elena Díaz Björkquist, Andrea Hernandez Holm) In response to AZ SB 1070, in 2010 a Facebook page titled Poets Responding to SB 1070 was born. It has become a lively forum of poetics and politics involving a response of over two thousand poems. Panelists will discuss the success of the project, an upcoming anthology, and how social movements can incorporate poetry and writing into their organizing in order to bring about political awareness and empowerment. Presenters will read from poetry submissions and from their own work.

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Room 110, Plaza Level

F112. Progression by Digression: Multiple Narrative Lines in Creative Nonfiction. (Deborah Lott, Peter Trachtenberg, Paul Lisicky, Hope Edelman) Laurence Sterne’s iconoclastic 1760 novel, Tristram Shandy, can be seen as a forebear to contemporary works of creative nonfiction. In this panel, four writers of CNF look at works that also progress via digression with their main narrative arcs illuminated, enhanced, commented on, and deepened by other threads. They’ll examine how seemingly digressive narrative lines can open up a work’s temporal frame, enlarge its perspective, provide metaphoric resonance, and add to its intellectual complexity.

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10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

Room 104, Plaza Level

F135. This Is Not a Cigar: The Uses of Therapy in a Writing Workshop. (Diana Joseph, Geoff Herbach, Sue William Silverman, Kerry Cohen, Sam Ligon) Writing teachers often dismiss therapy’s place in workshop, equating it with navel-gazing, at odds with critical thinking. The writers on this panel think the word “therapy,” while highly charged, is widely misunderstood. We will discuss how we successfully appropriate selective practices of therapy, exploring theories borrowed from existential psychology, as well as ethical concerns faced when working with vulnerable students. Which elements work while maintaining the focus on creating art?

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Room 200, Level 2

F142. Essaying the Essay. (David Lazar, Phillip Lopate, David Shields, Lia Purpura, Reda Bensmaïa) This panel will speak to the essentially self-reflective nature of the essay: the ways essays have, historically, insistently talked about themselves. All the panelists have work in the newly released anthology Essaying the Essay, from Welcome Table Press, which presents essays on the essay from Montaigne to the present; they will read portions of their work and reflect/revise ways their views of the essay have modified over time.

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12:00 noon to 1:15 p.m.

Room 111, Plaza Level

F170. 1963: 50 Years Later. (Jeffrey McDaniel, Rachel Zucker, Thomas Lux, Amy Gerstler) 1963 was a year of crossroads and convergences in American poetry, a year that not only confirms American poetry’s lineage, but also highlights the various directions American poetry would go in the coming decades. Five contemporary poets discuss vital books published or written in ’63, including The Moving Target (Merwin), Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (Rich), The Branch Will Not Break (James Wright), Ariel (Plath), and books by Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Creeley, Anne Sexton, WC Williams, and others.

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Room 204, Plaza Level

F175. Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry. (Dorothea Lasky, Michael Cirelli, Martin Farawell, Terry Blackhawk, Eileen Myles) Contributors to a new book focused on exciting young people about poetry will talk about their experiences with such poetry programs as InsideOut Literary Arts Project and the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and Poetry Program. The discussion will provide hands-on advice to those interested in creating poetry programming for kids both in classrooms and in nontraditional settings, and will cover topics such as what to expect, how to plan, and where to find poetry resources.

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Room 208, Level 2

F178. A Congeries of Voices: Vernacular and Diction in Contemporary Poetry. (Carmen Gimenez Smith, Joanna Fuhrman, Samuel Amadon, Lara Glenum, Rodrigo Toscano) Many contemporary poets appropriate the lexicon and syntax of foreign or marginal languages, often adopting the slang of a particular historical moment. These linguistic choices may be charged with political or cultural resistance, or they may be purely aesthetic. This panel will discuss the various possibilities and implications of appropriating and subverting foreign or marginal dictions in poems and what these explorations mean to the future of poetry.

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Room 210, Level 2

F180. The Urge Toward Memoir. (Elisabeth Schmitz, Jill Kneerim, Michael Thomas, Jeanette Winterson, Lily King) Novelists Jeanette Winterson, Emily Raboteau, Michael Thomas, agent Jill Kneerim, and editor Elisabeth Schmitz discuss the writer’s urge toward memoir. What defines memoir and is it any more “true” or less creative a process than fiction? Panelists will talk about a favorite memoir and the forms they invented for their own.

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1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.

Room 101, Plaza Level

F190. Options of the I: The Post-Memoir Memoir. (Alex Lemon, Lia Purpura, Brian Christian, Nin Andrews) AGNI marks its 40th birthday with an exploration of personal writing in the age of the complexified I. Panelists will consider issues of obliquity, fragmentation, collage, and counterpoint, truth-telling, personae, tonal ventriloquism, and other approaches that conduce to projecting new configurations of the contemplative and narrative self. Moderated by Sven Birkerts.

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3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m

Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Level 2

F219. Don DeLillo & Dana Spiotta: A Reading and Conversation, Sponsored by The Center for Fiction. (Noreen Tomassi, Don DeLillo, Dana Spiotta) Celebrated novelists Don DeLillo, author of Underworld, Libra, and White Noise, and Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia, present readings, to be followed by a discussion moderated by Noreen Tomassi, Executive Director of the Center for Fiction

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Room 109, Plaza Level

F228. The Arcadia Project: Writing the Postmodern Pastoral. (Joshua Corey, Brenda Iijima, Dan Beachy-Quick, Jennifer Moxley, Jonathan Skinner) The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral is a groundbreaking new anthology from Ahsahta Press of contemporary poems that interrogate, refurbish, and upend the American pastoral tradition of Emerson and Thoreau. Four poets represented in the book discuss their work and explore the relevance of the ancient genre of idealized nature poetry to a world increasingly dominated by the discourse of disaster and environmental crisis

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4:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.

Room 206, Level 2

F266. Bring Out Your Dead: Writing Ghosts (and Zombies) in Literary Fiction. (Rebecca Makkai, Tea Obreht, Lauren Groff, Dan Chaon, Alexi Zentner) The ghost story thrives in literary fiction as well as the oral tradition, defying genre. How do we keep these compelling tales fresh? How do we frighten without resorting to cheap tricks? How do we navigate the borders between spirituality, science, doubt, and a reliable narrative voice? And why are we drawn to these themes again and again? Five writers introduce you to their ghosts and tell you how they summoned them.

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Room 208, Level 2

F268. The Bible, Women, and American Literature. (Virginia Gilbert, Sena Jeter Naslund, Kelly Cherry, Alicia Ostriker, Grace Bauer) From the Pilgrim Fathers through Dickinson, Melville, Hemingway, and beyond, the Bible has been a major source for American writers. It is also constantly referred to in the national debates on women’s roles in society. How do women today contribute to this tradition which is both literary and political? Five women writers who use Bible-based themes transformatively in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction will discuss their own and others’ work and invite audience discussion.

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10:00 p.m. to 12:00 midnight

Sheraton Boston Hotel, Constitution Ballroom, Level 2

F287. AWP Public Reception & Dance Party, Sponsored by Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department & Story Week. A dance party with music by DJ Neza. Free beer and wine from 10:00 to 11:00 p.m. Cash bar from 11:00 p.m. to midnight.

March 7, 2013; AWP Boston

9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.

Room 206, Level 2

R117. Writing Masculinities. (Samuel Ace, Thomas McBee, Brandon Shimoda, Farid Matuk, Rickey Laurentiis) This panel will offer a cross-genre/cross-sexuality/cross-gendered reading, with discussion to follow, about the interweave of the (other than) masculine in one’s work by writers who use “he” but put the “he” in question. Panelists will read from work that reimagines the landscape of the masculine, directly or obliquely, through a dense exploration of subject matter and language, while raising important questions about how masculinity is defined and what it represents

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Room 208, Level 2

R119. Religion and Stories: Heretics and Humanists Shift the Perspective. (Mary Johnson, Alan Lightman, Rebecca Goldstein, Donna Johnson, Kristen Wolf) These writers, though not conventionally religious, use religion to explore reality. One novelist creates a physics-bound god (and his Aunt Penelope), another structures a novel using arguments against God, and a third imagines Jesus as a woman. The memoirists demystify Mother Teresa, and recall a childhood under gospel tents. Join them for a frank discussion of issues (creative, cultural, moral, and legal) involved when writers use what others regard as sacred to illuminate the human condition.

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10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

Room 208, Level 2

R145. The Artist as Activist: On Seeing and Saving the Natural World. (Tom Montgomery Fate, Elizabeth Dodd, Jennifer Sahn, Jeffrey S. Cramer, John T. Price) In the 19th century, inspired by Emerson’s essay, Nature, Henry David Thoreau initiated a tradition of the nature writer as observer-artist. Today, that tradition continues, but amid a natural world that has been nearly devastated by our own species. This panel of writers and editors will explore the evolving role of the nature writer as artist and activist—how seeing the world and saving the world are part of the same work.

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12:00 noon to 1:15 p.m.

Room 107, Plaza Level

R162. A Monster for Your Bridegroom: Jewish Mysticism in Contemporary Poetry. (Sheri Allen, Tony Barnstone, Jacqueline Osherow, Joy Ladin, Yehoshua November) A complex Jewish mystical tradition threaded with erotic elements has been a generous source of material appropriated by poets such as Allen Ginsberg amid the sexual and social revolutions of the 20th century. But in a current cultural milieu, which often associates religion with repressive violence and antagonism toward sexual exploration, how do poets make use of this erotic mysticism to speak to contemporary experience?

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Room 109, Plaza Level

R164. Epistolophilia: Using Letters and Diaries in Creative Nonfiction. (Julija Sukys, Elsie K. Neufeld, Gabrielle Burton, Joan Sohn, Shannon McFerran) Each panel participant has used collections of letters and diaries to write nonfiction. Topics for discussion that have arisen for us in our work will include: What are the challenges of having a handful of letters to draw on versus mountains of them? What is the role of chronology in this kind of work? How do we fill in the gaps that personal writings inevitably leave? What is the author’s responsibility to her subject? What possibilities open up when working with such rich visual material?

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Room 312, Level 3

R184. Prose and Verse Consubstantial: The New Mixed Form. (Peter Streckfus, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, C.D. Wright, Carole Maso, Julie Carr) Prose is our culture’s default for narrative. Writing organized by the poetic line is our default for lyric expression. This panel presents writers who, in lieu of erasing the boundaries between the paragraph and the line, alternate both forms in the same work. Authors will read from their own mixed-form work and discuss precedents from the rich history of the mixed form, ranging from Zukofsky’s “A” to Basho’s Narrow Road. How can mixed form serve the poet? The novelist?

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4:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.

Room 109, Plaza Level

R252. Poetry and/as Play. (Kristi Maxwell, Cathy Park Hong, Kevin McFadden, Kiki Petrosino, Joshua Ware) From the frequently disdained pun to constraint-based challenges that require writers to play with letters and words, forms of play often emerge in poems. Four poets will discuss ways of using play to generate material, along with the value of play in their own writing. They will address the ways that play can invigorate writing practices and change a writer’s relationship to language and composition, increasing his or her understanding of language’s possibilities and abundances.

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Room 209, Level 2

R263. Bending Genre. (Margot Singer, Nicole Walker, Robin Hemley, Dave Madden) The hot debate over ethics in creative nonfiction has sidelined important questions of literary form. Hybrid, innovative, and unconventional, nonfiction is arguably the most exciting area on the literary scene today. But how does nonfiction actually work? How does it recombine and transform elements of other genres? What techniques distinguish nonfiction from other kinds of prose? Contributors to a groundbreaking new anthology of critical essays share their perspectives and ideas

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8:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Level 2

R277. AWP 2013 Keynote, A Conversation Between Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott, moderated by Rosanna Warren, Sponsored by Bath Spa University. (Rosanna Warren, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott) Celebrated poet and translator Seamus Heaney is the author of more than twenty volumes of poetry, essays, and translations, including Opened Ground; District and Circle, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; Human Chain; and Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001. Poet, playwright, and essayist Derek Walcott is the author of eight collections of plays, a book of essays, and fourteen poetry collections, including Omeros, Tiepolo's Hound, and most recently, White Egrets. Playwright and novelist Steve May, Director of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, will introduce the two Nobel Prize-winning poets, who will present readings of their work. A discussion will follow, moderated by the poet and critic Rosanna Warren, author of Ghost in a Red Hat.

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10:00 p.m. to 12:00 midnight

Sheraton Boston Hotel, Constitution Ballroom, Level 2

R279. AWP Public Reception & Dance Party, Sponsored by Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department & Story Week. A dance party with music by DJ Neza. Free beer and wine from 10:00 p.m. to midnight.

Stories of Diversity: A Call for Your Story

As Washburn’s First Year Experience is revising its textbook, The Washburn University Diversity Initiative (WUDI) is helping with a chapter on diversity. It is our plan to feature stories from the Washburn Community as a way to introduce ourselves and our diverse backgrounds to first-year students. As Washburn defines diversity broadly to encompass gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, religion, and national origin, our students make up a diverse community—each with a story to tell. In addition, we are also looking for students who “grew up” privileged to share their stories of when they first became aware of their privileged background.  

We encourage you to share your story!

All Washburn students, staff, faculty, and administration—the Washburn Community at-large—are invited to submit their stories for publication. In addition, these stories may be used for future FYE textbooks. All rights revert back to writers. Previously published stories will be accepted, with note of where the piece first appeared.   Please e-mail your story as a non-attachment text to WUDI Committee Member Dennis Etzel Jr. at dennis [dot] etzel [at] washburn [dot] edu. All stories will be considered for the next textbook or for future textbooks.

Deadline: December 15, 2012  

The Washburn University Diversity Initiative’s Mission: To honor the Washburn University commitment to respect, embrace, enhance and celebrate diversity at all levels of the University and surrounding communities through faculty, staff, student and administrative efforts and community partnerships.