Well, last year it was in Chicago in February, and I was like “who the bleep goes to Chicago in February?”

This year it is in Denver in April, and I hear this is a good place to be. So, here I am. I am NOT going to bring my laptop, (can you believe it?). I’m going to soak it up in person, be there 100%. Readings, Book Fair, Panel Discussions.

Q: What types of events can I expect to see at the AWP Conference?
A: The AWP Annual Conference hosts events on wide raging and varied subjects pertaining to all aspects of literature and writing.  From readings by some of the mostly highly regarded contemporary non-fiction writers, novelists, and poets, to discussions on career advancement, craft, translation, pedagogy, and regional issues, the AWP Conference offers events as diverse as the institutions and individuals that make up our 28,000 members.

Keynote by Michael Chabon.

Presentations by George Saunders (5 STARS) Steve Almond (you know how I feel about him) Jill McKorkle, Rita Dove, David Wroblewski and more.

Also: R156. A Pen Behind Your Ear: Gathering, Editing, Publishing, Marketing, and Promoting an Anthology.

R184. How to Start Your Own Online Literary Magazine: Five Editors Tell All. (Rebecca Morgan Frank, Michael Archer, Thom Didato, Gregory Donovan, Ravi Shankar)

Or, CHECK THIS OUT! R210. Smart Girls II: The Ambition Game. (Patricia Foster, Sue Silverman, Dorothy Allison, Karen McElmurray, Xu Xi) This panel of women will examine the hard choices they have made in their writing careers: risk over safety, individual choices over the approval of others, discipline over despair, and an active resistance over the status-quo. They will discuss how self-questioning—as well as community—can have an impact on a writing life, and how ambition requires relentless faith and tenacity.

Somehow I’ll have to make time for lunch and finish off each day with a Grey Goose Gimlet with my companions: writer/teacher Bridget; writer/teacher/entrepreneur Janna; writer/writer Marie.

Woo Hoo!