Association of Writers and Writing Programs San Antonio TX 2020

The Paris Review will once again be at the AWP Conference & Bookfair, the largest meeting of writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers in North America. This year’s convention will take place in San Antonio, Texas. The conference features more than 2,000 presenters and 550 readings, panels, and craft lectures. The bookfair hosts more than 800 presses, journals, and literary organizations from around the world. If you’ll be attending, stop by Booth 1422 at the bookfair or attend events featuring staff members of The Paris Review.

Digital director Craig Morgan Teicher at F248. Of Two Minds: Editors Who Are Writers

Room 006A, Henry B. González Convention Center, River Level
Friday, March 6, 2020
3:20 P.M. to 4:35 P.M.

The relationship between writers and editors is as storied as the history of publishing itself. An editor must be able to subsume their own voice in order to attend to another’s. Yet there are creative benefits to the writer who also edits. What is the overlap between writing and editing? What does it take to function effectively as both a writer and an editor? In this panel, contemporary writers who are also editors will discuss the practice of being of two minds: editorial and authorial.

Moderator: James Cihlar

Participants: Karen Babine, Heid E. Erdrich, William Johnson, Craig Morgan Teicher

Editor Emily Nemens at S154. Making a Career as a Lit Mag Editor

Room 205, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Saturday, March 7, 2020
10:35 A.M. to 11:50 A.M.

What are the paths to editing a literary magazine? This panel of accomplished editors will share their best advice for those hoping to break into the field. They’ll cover getting that first job, getting paid, what hiring parties are looking for, issues of inclusivity and bias, industry trends, and how editing can complement or conflict with other parts of a writer’s career. Journals represented include Ecotone, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Paris Review, Shenandoah, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

Moderator: Rachel Ranie Taube

Participants: Khaled Mattawa, Emily Nemens, Beth Staples, Allison Wright

Editor Emily Nemens at S205. Behind the Curtain: The Editors Speak!

Room 217D, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Saturday, March 7, 2020
12:10 P.M. to 1:25 P.M.

The submission process can be daunting and mysterious. Most of us use an online submission system and then patiently wait—sometimes for more than a year—before receiving a canned rejection. So what can the average writer do to be a better submitter of their work, to catch an editor’s eye, to get past the slush pile? This diverse panel assembles some of the top literary-magazine editors in the country to answer questions about the submissions process and what goes on behind the scenes.

Moderator: Christian Kiefer

Participants: Emily Nemens, Adam Ross, Oscar Villalon, Allison Wright

Henry B. González Convention Center

900 E Market Street, San Antonio, TX, 78205

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'The Paris Review Podcast' Live at On Air Fest 2020

The minds behind The Paris Review Podcast, which The New Yorker recently called “a wonder of literary delights,” will create an episode-length audio odyssey live onstage at On Air Fest in New York. New and archival stories, poems, and interviews from the pages of The Paris Review will fill the air, accompanied by live scoring from musicians David Cieri and Emily Wells and performed by stage and screen actor Quincy Tyler Bernstine and Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Vijay Seshadri. Executive producers John DeLore, Emily Nemens, and Brendan Francis Newnam will guide the performance. Presented by The Paris Review and Stitcher.

The session will include

• A reading from Vijay Seshadri of his poems
• a new story by Rebecca Makkai read by Quincy Tyler Bernstine
• Archival audio from Season 2: Toni Morrison Interview
• Emily Nemens, John DeLore, and Brendan Francis Newnam discussing the podcast

Buy your tickets and find out more through the On Air Fest website.

Performer Bios

Quincy Tyler Bernstine’s acting credits include: NY Theater (selected credits): Marys Seacole (Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play); Our Lady of 121st Street (Lortel nomination); The Amateurs (Lortel nomination); As You Like It (Lortel nomination); Small Mouth Sounds; Peer Gynt; Grand Concourse (Lortel nomination); 10 out of 12; The Nether; Mr. Burns; Neva (Lortel nomination); We Are Proud to Present a Presentation…; born bad; Red-Handed Otter; Family Week; Ruined (2009 Obie for Performanc­e, Clarence Derwent, and Audelco Awards); In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play); The Misanthrope; A Small, Melodramatic Story; Matt & Ben, ‘nami; (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch; The Ladies. Film (selected credits): Manchester by the Sea, Easy Living, Still Alice, Ned Rifle, Red Hook Summer, While We’re Young, Hungry Hearts, Rachel Getting Married. TV (selected credits): Ray Donovan, The Code, Modern Love, Power, High Maintenance, The Good Wife, The Blacklist, Elementary, Blue Bloods, Madam Secretary, The Leftovers, The Strain, Chappelle’s Show, Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Education: Brown (B.A.), UCSD (M.F.A.). 2019 Obie for Sustained Excellence in Performance, Cullman 3rd Award for Extraordinary Creativity (Lincoln Center, 2019), 2015 Lilly Award, Charles Bowden Award from New Dramatists.

David Cieri is a New York City–based pianist and composer and led the band that created the original music for both Season 1 and Season 2 of The Paris Review Podcast. He has done scoring work on documentaries produced by Ken Burns, the Ewers Brothers, Ark Media, and others. He has recorded many albums, including collaborative works with the poet Yusef Komunyakaa. His newest album is An Homage to Carl Th. Dreyer’s 1928 ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc.’

John DeLore loves sound. He is a senior editor and audio engineer at Stitcher’s NYC studio. He has worked on the following projects: The Paris Review Podcast, Stranglers, Beautiful/Anonymous, The Longest Shortest Time, Couric, Clear and Vivid with Alan Alda, Fake the Nation, The Sporkful, Household Name. Before Stitcher he worked at Gimlet (Mystery Show, Reply All, StartUp), and before that he worked at WNYC (Studio 360, On the Media, Freakonomics, Death Sex & Money, Radiolab live tour). John also writes and records music and is a big fan of Dostoyevsky. 

Emily Nemens is the editor of The Paris Review, the nation’s preeminent literary quarterly. Since its founding in 1953, The Paris Review has been dedicated to discovering the best new voices in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art. Her first novel, The Cactus League, was published by FSG (February 2020).

Brendan Francis Newnam is a pioneer in the cultural audio space and a leading producer of today’s most lauded programs. As creator and cohost of The Dinner Party Download, a nationally syndicated radio show and podcast about arts and culture, he has interviewed, and matched wits with, the biggest stars and creative thinkers of our time. Newnam also cocreated and produced the critically acclaimed Paris Review Podcast and edited Aria Code, a collaboration between the Met Opera and WNYC Studios that the New York Times calls “luminous” and The New Yorker describes as “elegantly constructed and effortlessly listenable.” He is the founder of Public Address, a full-service audio production shop that consults and creates prestige podcasts for organizations including the Wall Street Journal and First Look Media. 

Vijay Seshadri was born in Bangalore, India, in 1954 and moved to the U.S. at the age of five. He is the author of the poetry books Wild Kingdom, The Long Meadow, and 3 Sections, as well as many essays, reviews, and memoir fragments. Over the course of his career, his work has been widely published, anthologized, and recognized with many honors, most recently the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for 3 Sections and a 2015 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was educated at Oberlin College and Columbia University, and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

“Quietly transfixing” composer/producer Emily Wells is known for her varied use of classical and modern instrumentation, described as “a master of blending the worlds of classical and electronics” (NPR) and known for her “dramatic, meticulous and gothic songs” (New York Times). Onstage, Wells builds a “new instrument” out of acoustic and electronic drums, synth, and violin, and her evocative performances leave audiences equal parts dancing and grieving. Wells’s latest work, This World Is Too _____ for You, was released in March 2019 and has been hailed by NPR as “breathtaking,” “mind-blowing,” and “visionary.” The ten-song album, arranged for chamber ensemble by composer Michi Wiancko, was commissioned by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series and New York’s Metropolis Ensemble, which performs on the album along with drummer/composer Shayna Dunkelman (Du Yun, Xiu Xiu).

The Wythe Hotel

80 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn, 11249

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PAST EVENT: A Conversation Around The World: Launching Writers at Work around the World

To celebrate The Paris Review’s latest anthology, Writers at Work around the World, the magazine is saluting its international origins with a conversation in English at the Albertine Bookstore (972 Fifth Avenue). Join us for the launch on Thursday, June 6, at 7:00 P.M. Paris Review editor Emily Nemens will be in conversation with recent contributor Hernan Diaz and Peter Carey, whose 2006 Art of Fiction interview is featured in the anthology. The event is free and open to the public.

Writers at Work around the World is the latest volume published by the magazine’s in-house, limited-edition imprint, Paris Review Editions. Two currents have been central to the magazine since its founding in Paris in the fifties: internationalism, and documenting the thoughts, processes, and concerns of the greatest writers of our time. The book explores fiction from all corners of the globe, beginning with François Mauriac’s interview in 1953 and reaching forward to Dany Laferrière’s in 2017, stopping along the way with Chinua Achebe, Jorge Luis Borges, Ha Jin, Herta Müller, and Elena Ferrante, among others.

Albertine Bookstore

972 Fifth Avenue, New York , 10075

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PAST EVENT: Poetry Rx Live

Dear Poets, Can you suggest a poem to help me start moving forward? Dear Poets, Is there a poem that captures the slow melancholy of a rainy day? Dear Poets, Is there a poem that holds all the hope I hold for the future? Dear Poets, I’m queer, I’m queer, I’m so queer and so closeted. Help.

In our beloved online column Poetry Rx, readers write in with a specific emotion or problem, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poem to match. On June 8 at 4 P.M., these star poets will take the stage and fix you with poetry, LIVE at the Bell House. 

Buy your tickets from The Bell House and then submit your own question to [email protected] — there's a good chance your question will be chosen the night of the event! (all submissions will be anonymous) 

The Bell House

149 7th Street, Brooklyn, 11215

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PAST EVENT Writers at Work/The Paris Review: An Evening with Kwame Anthony Appiah and David Remnick

On Wednesday, January 29, New Yorker editor David Remnick will interview scholar, philosopher, and author Kwame Anthony Appiah for his Art of Nonfiction interview at the Morgan Library.

The Paris Review’s renowned Writers at Work interview series is one of the landmarks of modern world literature. Hailed by the New York Times as “the most remarkable interviewing project we possess,” the series received a George Polk Award and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Writers at Work interviews, at once expansive and intimate, are rarely conducted in public; Mr. Remnick’s interview of Mr. Appiah brings one of the leading intellectuals of our time into conversation with one of New York’s great editors on a truly special evening. 

The exhibition Alfred Jarry: The Carnival of Being will be open at 6 PM for program attendees. Select works from The Paris Review Archive, owned by the Morgan, will be on view. 

Tickets: $20; $15 for Morgan Members and Paris Review Subscribers; free for students with valid ID.

For more information or to purchase a ticket please visit the website of The Morgan Library and Museum. 

David Remnick. Photography by Brigitte Lacombe.
Kwame Anthony Appiah. Photography by Richard Trenner.

The Morgan Library and Museum

225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, 10016

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