Genre: Not Genre-Specific

I was looking forward to meeting up with the literary outreach coordinators, Justin Rogers from Detroit and Lupe Mendez from Houston, and staff members from Poets & Writers at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in San Antonio, Texas this week, but safety first. Due to the concern about the coronavirus in San Antonio, we decided not to attend and sadly had to cancel the wonderful panel planned on Saturday to discuss our respective literary communities in New Orleans, Detroit, and Houston.

Nevertheless, people in New Orleans are taking all the news in stride. Some local writers who were planning to attend the AWP conference stayed in New Orleans, others went ahead to San Antonio.

The good thing is, we still have lots of great literary events to look forward to in New Orleans:

The New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University is March 19­–21.

The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival is March 25–29.

The New Orleans Poetry Festival will be in April during National Poetry Month.

Join us in New Orleans!

It’s been a hard week for many of us who were and are considering attending the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in San Antonio, Texas. Although the AWP Board of Directors announced its decision to move forward with the conference despite concern about the coronavirus in San Antonio, Poets & Writers has made the difficult decision not to attend, and I will also not be attending. Over a hundred panels and events have been canceled leaving many writers across the country seeking alternatives, leaving it up to us writers to find a way to hold community.

In the past couple days, the literary community on Twitter was left hanging in anxious suspense as we awaited a statement from AWP, and word from one another about individual decisions. In that time frame, #AWPVirtualBookFair was created along with a community Google Doc that lists presses and the discounts they are offering for books that were to be sold at the conference—it’s a digital book fair!

In addition, on Tuesday afternoon, I got word from Tariq Luthun that he is working with Christin Lee at Room Project to put on what is being called “A Very Last-Second Poetry Reading and Tiny Book Fair.” We are calling this an “offsite” AWP reading and it will feature Brittany Rogers, Rachel McKibbens, and many more. The event will be held on Friday, March 6 at 7:00 PM at Room Project. If you are in Detroit, come by!

And if you are traveling to AWP, please be safe and take every precaution.