I’m super excited that two proposals that I am on for the AWP 2019 conference in Portland have been accepted. Here’s the scoop:

Season of the Witch: Feminism, Ritual, and Independent Publishing (Brooke Wonders,
Kiki Petrosino, Joanna C. Valente, Mary Biddinger, Annah Browning)

Helen Oyeyemi writes of “…witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don’t have names.” What unnamed experiences might a feminist literary magazine or press want to summon? Join the editors of Luna Luna, Grimoire Magazine, Transom, and University of Akron Press as we discuss how ritual, folk practices, and symbols like the witch provide a way of speaking the unnamed, especially in the wake of the #metoo movement.

Maintaining Beginner’s Mind in Your Own Classroom: A Poetry Reading (Amie
Whittemore, Mary Biddinger, Adrienne Su, Keith S. Wilson, Cameron Barnett)

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities,” Shunryu Suzuki writes in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “but in the expert’s there are few.” This panel refutes this dichotomy by featuring expert poets at play and inviting the audience to join the fun. Panelists will read poems inspired by prompts they have assigned each other, discussing the prompts as avenues to beginner’s mind. Then the audience will try a prompt on the spot, bringing the rest home for personal or classroom use.

If you’re heading to AWP in the spring, I hope to see you there!