Thursday

12:10 p.m. to 1:25 p.m.
Rooms 445-446, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
T175. Textploitation: Topical Issues in Fiction

(Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Tomas Moniz, Miah Jeffra, Joseph Han, Keenan Norris)
In an adrenaline-driven culture rife with fearmongering and trauma porn, how do we write conscientious fiction about local, national or global issues and emergencies? Given the damage and desensitization linked to our constant exposure to bleed-and-lead news, many writers grapple with exercising awareness, optimism and empathy while shining a light on injustice, treachery, and tragedy. Five award-winning authors/editors discuss illuminating—vs. sensationalizing—real-life topics in fictional work.

12:10 p.m. to 1:25 p.m.
Rooms 347-348, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
T166. Battle of the Textbooks

(Michael Kardos, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Jennifer Pullen, Joe Wilkins)
The authors on this multigenre panel, each of whom has published a creative writing textbook, will not actually be battling one another. They will, however, discuss why they decided to write / edit their textbook, the niche they hoped to fill, and the ways in which their textbook authorship has affected their own teaching and writing. For aspiring textbook authors, the panel will address practical matters of writing a proposal, compiling an anthology, and finding a publisher.

1:45 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Room 437, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
T199.Divine Writing: Connections between Writing Practice, Craft, and Divination

(Michele Battiste, Hoa Nguyen, Megan Kaminski, Hillary Leftwich, Selah Saterstrom)
What are divination poetics and how do they manifest in writing practice? Can divination tools such as the Tarot, I Ching, and Throwing the Bones influence modes of creation and assemblage? Does the written word have the same generative agency as a reading? When we read the spread or the signs are we also writing the story? Four writers and divination practitioners share the ways in which divination, intuition, and embodied knowledge influence, guide, and disrupt their writing.

 

Friday

9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.
Room 447-448, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
F127. Queer Chimera: The Fervor and Fantasy of Genre Transgression

(Jenny Bitner, Celeste Chan, Miah Jeffra, Kathleen J Woods, Danny Thanh Nguyen)
This panel brings together writers who defy and merge genres and forms to discuss queer expression in messy, multifaceted hybrid work. Drawing from a range of cultural and literary backgrounds, and examining both their own work and the work of others, these writers will discuss the craft of writing the grief, anger, desire, and joy that insists upon formal contradiction and possibility—refusing to be singularly contained.

10:35 a.m. to 11:50 a.m.
Rooms 435-436, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
F147. Queer Writing between Certain Death and a Possible Future

(Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, EJ Colen, Sassafras Lowrey, Patrick Milian, Eddie Walker)
Readings and conversation based on the acclaimed anthology Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis, edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, which was named one of the best queer books of all time by Book Riot. The book centers the experience of queer writers who came of age in the midst of the AIDS epidemic with the belief that desire intrinsically led to death, and who internalized this trauma as part of becoming queer.

12:10 p.m. to 1:25 p.m.
Rooms 328-329, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
F159. Hide and Seek: Writing the Informed Memoir

(Emma Eisenberg, Chet’la Sebree, Chloé Cooper Jones, Sabrina Imbler, Annie Liontas)
This panel, in the words of bell hooks, explores how interdisciplinary creative nonfiction “evokes the personal as a prelude” to reach beyond the self. How can we weave memoir with history / science / philosophy to define not only ourselves, but our current cultural moment? How does research empower us to emerge or to hide in plain sight? What are our blind spots, and how do we turn them into revelations? What biases exist against the form—external and internal—and how do we resist on and off the page?

 

Saturday

1:45 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Room 331, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
S184. Incant, Invent, Illuminate: Formal Innovation under Colonial Patriarchy

(Raena Shirali, Irène Mathieu, Marwa Helal, Desiree Bailey, Kiran Bath)
In poetry as in prose, language can function both to illuminate our experiences and as a form of spell-casting against forces that seek to control it. How might a poem or essay be an antidote to respectability, ancestral incantation, or psychic shield? Through invented forms, lyrical experimentation, and negotiation of archival material, four poetry and prose writers trouble and hex colonial and patriarchal paradigms in a discussion about writing within, through, and against Western empire.

1:45 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Rooms 333-334, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
S186. Your Best Book Launch: Publicity for Poets (and Other Small Press Writers)

(Nancy Reddy, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Caelan Nardone, Catherine Bresner)
You’ve had a book accepted for publication–now what? This panel, which includes writers and publicists, offers practical strategies for ensuring your book meets its ideal readers. Panelists will provide tips for creating publicity materials and generating buzz; planning events including readings, workshops, and interactive discussions; and reaching readers through podcasts, newsletters, and other new media. Panel will suggest both what writers can do themselves and how and when to enlist help.

3:20 p.m. to 4:35 p.m.
Rooms 338-339, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3
S216. Exploring the Terrain of Fiction—Writing as a Means of Survival

(Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, Christine Sneed, Michael Wang, Karin Lin-Greenberg, Adam McOmber)
From short stories to novels, from social realism to speculative fiction, from American tales to immigrant lit, from heterosexual narratives to LGBTQ stories, five award-winning authors—Christine Sneed, Karin Lin-Greenberg, Michael X. Wang, Matthew Lansburgh, and Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry—will read from their most recent work on themes of love, loss, war, cultural identity, and displacement.