Category: Parenting

At AWP22: Moderating a Panel and Reading

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#AWP22 was a swirl of activities as the literary world is emerging from the downtime of the pandemic. What a difference from the last live AWP convention, March 2020 in San Antonio, the so-called #AWPocalypse of 2020 – a conference on the edge of a world shutting down, which I wrote about for the California Writing Club.

This gathering in the beautiful, historic downtown Philadelphia was pretty much back to business as usual. AWP (Association of Writers and Writers Programs) conventions do a great job putting writers together with one another, presses, agents, literary journals. I always have a hard time deciding which panel or talk to attend as so many happen at the same time.

One of my personal highlights at AWP 2022 was reading the essay “Christmas Dreidels,” excerpted from my yet-to-be-published memoir A Family, Maybe and published recently in Citadel, at the AWP Two-Year College Creative Writing Caucus offsite literary reading at Community College of Philadelphia on 3/25/22. So thankful to be part of this warm, supportive group of teaching writers.

Our panel included writers/professors from community colleges that publish literary journals. (L-R): Joe Baumann, [me], Magin LaSov Gregg, and Maria Brandt.

“Where Every Voice Matters: Community College Literary Journal Showcase” was an AWP 2022 panel I organized and moderated the morning after the reading. Together, we explored strategies to engage underrepresented writers and help them grow in the literary world, read samples of student writing from our journals, and discussed new ways to produce and publicize these publications. So many ideas; such great questions from the audience. Stay tuned for a summary of these ideas in my upcoming blog post for AWP Two-Year College Creative Writing Caucus.

And finally, a nice write-up about the conference in Publishers Weekly.

Celebrating Int’l Family Equality Day with a Blog Post on FamilyEquality.org

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Proud to share my guest blog post on the Family Equality website as part of the celebration of the International Family Equality Day (IFED 2020). To me as a gay parent, and a former refugee who has lived in different cultures, this cause – equal rights for LGBT families everywhere – is very dear to my heart.
Family Equality approached me for an essay a couple of months ago, and it has now gone live through its nationwide mailing list, Facebook, and Twitter. Take a look by clicking the photo below. Thank you for your time and sign up to stay in touch.
IFED Blog photo

 

Speaking Out on Gay Parenting and Writing at Lambda LitFest

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Loved being part of the “Our Families, Our Stories: Writing and Parenting in the Trenches” apanel t 2019 Lambda LitFest with Michael Kearns, Carla Sameth, Pat Alderete, and Aimee Rowe, and reading there the opening chapter of my book Dispositions. From a lesbian Mom with a child from a short-lived straight marriage, to a pioneering, single HIV-positive Dad, to two gay Moms raising their kids, each with her own, unique path, to our story, we presented a wide range of moving parenting experiences.

To me, the last 15 years have also been an experience of being both in and outside the traditional parenting narrative. What sets gay male parenting apart is that it is a 100% intentional endeavor. We have fought an uphill fight, and have come a long way. In 2019, our right to parent is a reality, but any way you look at it, parenting remains of little interest to many within our community. And it’s fine because it’s how it should be: intentional, not a slip-up, a by-product, or a means to end. LambdaLitFest1 9-27-19 (Final)

    #lambdaliterary

Lambda LitFest Writing/Parenting Panel

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Please come to our panel “Our Families, Our Stories: Writing and Parenting in the Trenches” at Lambda Literary Festival. Here’s the panel description:

For those LGBTQ writers who are parents, the realities of parenthood intersects at every level of the professional author experience. Queer parents are often intentional in creating their families and in how they position their identities as writers, from craft to publication and marketing. Markedly so when you define yourself as other than a traditional “parent” and know how much words matter.
This interdisciplinary program features diverse authors who have published in multiple genres in magazines and books. The queer parenting experience is historically underrepresented and is now a rising area of focus in literary publishing.
Panelists will talk about how they both write about and interrogate some of the assumptions of parenting today.
Readings (fiction/memoir/poetry), followed by discussion.

    #lambdaliterary

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Every Child Deserves a Family website… with our photo

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Every Child Deserves a Family campaign website launched earlier this week supports the efforts to “win and conserve protections” for gay 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 Council, which is leading it.

PS. In this 2007 photo, the kids are 1 and 3.