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.