On return from AWP, I found that my letter to The Jewish Journal (LA) got published in my absence. I’d sent it in response to a prior feature article about why the US should continue to support Israel. I suppose JJ timed it with the Israeli elections, as they put it at the very top of the Letters page, both in print and online. My letter highlights the spiritual significance of Israel in the American worldview.
Letters: Israel Respects All Faiths, Reality vs. Fiction, A Deserved Tribute
On the closing night of the conference, I read my new short story “Saviors or Vultures?” based on a chapter from my memoir Dispositions, at a reading organized by the AWP College Writing Caucus at Café Marino Adriatico in the Division district.
Such a warm, receptive crowd, and a joy to hear other writers read the work, including Maria Brandt, Beth Mayer, and Marianne Taylor.
A perfect way to cap off a writing conference.
#AWP2019
#AWP19
It took me almost 2 days to get through the AWP 2019 bookfair. It is enormous, but then everything about this conference is enormous: 15,000 attendees ant-crawling through the convention center, 30 concurrent talk tracks, the enormous lines, and the ensuing networking and camaraderie.
Among my bookfair finds is a collection of Tel Aviv noir; gemlike essays on obscure figures from the Age of Enlightenment written by a shy Midwestern poet I heard earlier that day; a volume of Californian eco-poetry, which includes my friend Caryn Davidson; latest issues of the famed Virginia Quarterly Review (#VQR), all but given away to lighten the publisher’s suitcase. (And now weighing down mine.)
#AWP19
#AWP2019
Excited about learning about presses, agents, and writing programs at Association of Writers & Writing Programs‘ AWP 2019 conference. The line-up of published authors is amazing!
https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/
Every Child Deserves a Family campaign website launched earlier this week supports the efforts to “win and conserve protections” for LGBTQ families nationwide. I am simply delighted to have our family photo featured on it. (Click and scroll down to the “LGBTQ Families” section.) We’ve been proudly supporting ECDF, in particular, the work of Family Equality, which is leading it.
PS. The photo is from 2007 photo.
Glad to have participated in the November 2018 Poets & Writers’ Los Angeles Literary Roundtable, organized by the Poets & Writers magazine. What a great gathering! I enjoyed the Poetry.LA presentation and their noir poetry series with Suzanne Lummis, and talked about The Citadel unveiling. Two roundtable participants, it turns out, have published in The Citadel years ago. A special shoutout to my friend Carla Sameth (also in the photo), whose LGBT parenting memoir One Day on the Gold Line is coming out in July with the Black Rose Press.
“The iPad Wars” was read at the unveiling of the annual issue of The Citadel Nov. 14 in front of about 100 students and faculty in the campus Quad. After a few years on hiatus, our venerable literary journal is back! Published at LACC for more than 50 years, The Citadel features juried fiction and poetry by the writers from our college but also from the surrounding areas (Hollywood, Silverlake, Echo Park). The theme for this issue is What the Future Holds, and I thought that my story of a father fighting his pre-teen’s conquest of the Internet would illustrate it pretty well – another crossover of parenting experience into memoiristic writing. Very pleased to be part of the issue.
Please contact me directly for the copies of the story.
Lane Igoudin | Author, Professor, Dad