Grace Talusan, author of The Body Papers and winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, will be joining two panels at the 2022 AWP Conference & Bookfair.
In addition to offering an in-person event schedule in Philadelphia from March 23-26, 2022, AWP will incorporate a virtual component and offer an array of prerecorded virtual events. A virtual-only registration will be available for #AWP22 at a reduced registration rate. The in-person registration will include all in-person and virtual programming.
Emotional Pacing in the Trauma Narrative
Trauma memoirs require careful emotional pacing, which means modulating the presentation of emotionally charged material. In this panel, four memoirist offer strategies for guiding the reader’s experience in memoirs of near death, family secrets, and other difficult stories.
When: March 25 at 12:10pm to 1:25pm EST
Where: 113C, Pennsylvania Convention Center, 100 Level
Online, via Association of Writers & Writing Programs
Moderators:
Grace Talusan is the Fannie Hurst Writer in Residence at Brandeis University, and her memoir, The Body Papers, won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction.
Aggie Stewart is a Rhode Island-based writer and a fourth semester student in the Newport MFA program at Salve University. Her MFA focus is creative nonfiction. She is currently writing a memoir about growing up in the shadow of her mother’s sister’s murder, a closely guarded family secret.
Katherine E. Standefer is the author of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life, which was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice/Staff Pick. Her writing appeared in Best American Essays 2016. She teaches at Ashland University's low-res MFA and works as a trauma writing doula.
Alden Jones is the author of the books The Wanting Was a Wilderness, Unaccompanied Minors, and The Blind Masseuse. Her fiction and essays have appeared in BOMB, the Rumpus, the Cut, AGNI, and Best American Travel Writing. She teaches at Emerson College and the Newport MFA program.
Worth a Thousand Words: Integrating Visual Elements into Creative Nonfiction
Writers trade in words, but sometimes words aren't enough. A panel of award-winning memoirists and essayists will discuss how photos, documents, original artwork, and other visual elements can deepen, complicate, and illuminate creative nonfiction.
When: March 25 at 3:20pm to 4:35pm EST
Where: 113C, Pennsylvania Convention Center, 100 Level
Online, via Association of Writers & Writing Programs
Moderators:
Grace Talusan is the Fannie Hurst Writer in Residence at Brandeis University, and her memoir, The Body Papers, won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction.
Chelsea Biondolillo is the author of The Skinned Bird: Essays and two prose chapbooks, #Lovesong and Ologies. Her work has appeared in Best American Science & Nature Essays, Orion, Brevity, Diagram, River Teeth, Passages North, and others. She is a former Colgate O'Connor and Oregon Literary fellow.
Lilly Dancyger is the author of Negative Space, a reported and illustrated memoir selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the 2019 SFWP Literary Awards, and editor of Burn It Down, a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women's anger. She is an assistant editor at Barrelhouse Books.
Megan Culhane Galbraith is a writer and visual artist. Her debut, hybrid memoir-in-essays The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child's Memory Book was published in 2021 by Mad Creek Books of the Ohio State University Press. She is the associate director at the Bennington Writing Seminars.
Mary-Kim Arnold is the author of Litany for the Long Moment and The Fish & The Dove. A former arts administrator, she now teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown University.