News: AWP Here April 8-12

Just three weeks until Minneapolis goes word crazy with the annual literary conference (open to the public) of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). We've got the goods on events featuring our faculty, students, and alumnae/i--both AWP sessions and free off-site readings.

The largest literary conference in North America lands in Minneapolis April 8-11 at the conference center, and bundled with it are a plethora of free events all over the Twin Cities extending into Sunday.

The chief Creative Writing Program event is the faculty reading and cocktail party April 10 at the Weisman Museum. Rea Award in the Short Story recipient Charles Baxter will be celebrating his first new story collection in 18 years (There's Something I Want You to Do). And Regents Professor Patricia Hampl will preview a new book forthcoming from Viking, The Art of the Wasted Day.

Two of our Creative Writing professors, Baxter and poet Ray Gonzalez, will be honored during AWP for their literary careers. Gonzalez receives the Con Tinta Lifetime Achievement Award in Latino Literature from Con Tinta, a national organization of Latino writers, on Friday, April 10, from 2-3:30 pm at Bryant Lake Bowl. The event is free. Baxter will be feted by former students and peers at "A Tribute to Charles Baxter," an AWP conference panel Thursday, April 9, at 1:30 pm.

Creative Writing professors participating on AWP conference panels include Baxter (who's reading with Louise Erdrich on 4:30 pm Friday), Gonzalez, Hampl, Julie Schumacher, Peter Campion, Madelon Sprengnether, Michael Dennis Browne (Emeritus), Maria Damon (Emerita), and our brand new hire, the novelist V. V. Ganeshananthan. Here is a list of the more than 40 conference panels that feature English professors and alumnae/i (MFA, BA, and PhD).

One Thursday panel focuses on former students: "Almost Twenty Years of Making Stuff Up: A Fiction Reading/Celebration by University of Minnesota Alumni" features Matt Burgess, Amanda Coplin, Liana Liu, Susan Meyers, and Shannon Olson.

Among the many off-site events involving our faculty, alumnae/i, and students, the 4 pm Friday reading at Boneshaker Books features 20 writers who graduated from our MFA program.

Other writers reading and speaking at the conference are poets Anne Carson, Rita Dove, Carolyn Forché, Roxane Gay, Ted Kooser, and Claudia Rankine and prose writers Eula Biss, T. C. Boyle, Alice McDermott, Matt de la Pena, and (BA alumna) Cheryl Strayed.

We'll be publishing an AWP round-up with photos in the June e-Quarterly.