I'm not going to your stinkin' conference

me, at your stinkin conference.

First of all, I profiled Sarah McBride for The New Republic. The piece went online a few days ago, you can read it here, or, better yet, swing by your local bookstore (Barnes & Noble carries TNR) and pick up a copy of the magazine. The profile is print, right up front.

It’s convenient to be in print again because, whenever somebody asks me what I do, I usually tell them I’m unemployed. I say that because it stifles any follow-ups. Try it sometime. You’re at a cocktail party or a reception or some-such-shindig and you just want to be left alone to people-watch, tell that pesky elbow-rubber that you’re hopelessly unemployed and they’re guaranteed to hit the conversational eject button. But now if I feel like talking, I can say “well I just profiled Sarah McBride for The New Republic, it’s in the magazine” and that sounds very nice. I sound like the sort of person you want at your cocktail party.

And this credential lasts for a while. My Sarah McBride profile is running in TNR’s March issue. So I can nurse this thing at least until early April. Which is fortunate because, also in March, the annual Association of Writers & Poets conference is landing here in Los Angeles. I won’t formally attend but I do intend to haunt the thing. And now if somebody asks me what I’ve written lately, I can just clear my throat and say “well you really ought to read The New Republic, by the way, I’ve just published a profile there.”

It’s not much. It’s not a promising debut with Penguin Random House. But it sounds better than “well, I’ve been nominated for the same small press award as everybody else in this room.”

But really, why not go to AWP? Isn’t not going too cliche? Too blasé? A few years ago, I was getting drunk with this big-time poet in Dimes Square and I asked them about it. I said is it worth going to AWP? They told me it’s only worth going if you’re publishing a book in the next few months. You go to drum up business, as it were. And then, a few years later, I was having a beer with this short story writer I like who told me that the conference is only sufferable if you’re on acid. ¹

So no, I’m not going. I don’t particularly enjoy the company of most writers. And I certainly don’t trust writers ‘conferences.’ I grew up on Hemingway and too much of me continues returning that line from his Nobel speech: “organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing.”

But Hemingway tropes aside, this is the way it works. Firstly, you realize something is too expensive (attending this conference will run you about $600) and then you justify it. And, usually, you’re right. You don’t need that new nozzle for your hose. Sure, the old one doesn’t always work but if you hold it a certain way, it’s reliable.

And isn’t that good enough? I don’t need to go to AWP. I can schedule some coffees, pop into a dozen different bars at the right spots. After all, I meet people easily. And now, when they say “well, who the hell are you?” I can tell them “I just profiled Sarah McBride for The New Republic, it’s in the magazine. You should really pick up a copy.”²

1. I should note that when I was an undergrad, now well-over a decade ago, AWP was the thing. I’d have gone if I had the money. Everybody in my creative writing program was raving about it. But that, I suppose was my original skepticism. Because I liked those people because they were brilliant and inked-up and great poets but I felt like a sore thumb around them.

2. If you’re going to the conference, or will be in town then, obviously, shoot me a DM or comment or whatever. Would love to catch a drink.