Best Guesses as to What Happens at AWP
I hope there’s a drive-by shooting at AWP.
— GARBAGE (@PierreMenard) February 25, 2012
PhiLOLZophy is going to AWP in Chicago this weekend. Actually, we aren’t going to AWP, we are going to a party at Stephen Tully Dierk’s house and some other drunk stuff in the city. I know next to nothing about what the actual conference about, including what AWP stands for. It’s a lit conference I think. It’s cool enough that people have been tweeting about it for awhile but not cool enough that I would bother to ask any of the (actually) cool lit people I know if they are going. I also bought a ticket to a poetry reading slash dance party so I think it will be fun? Anyways, here are some things I ignorantly expect to see at AWP:
A bunch of lit nerds wearing Cafe Press t-shirts that say “What happens at AWP stays at AWP.”
23-year-old litsters in their first year grad programs fully-functioning under the belief that they will get a job as a “writer” one day.
At least one girl whose Twitter bio reads “A modern [adjective] Carrie Bradshaw from [bumfuck, NW town] who loves [hipster cause] as much as Manolos!”
Conversations about Jonathan Safran Foer. Ugh.
Nerdy tattoos.
You try to pick up a girl you met on the #AWP hashtag. It works.
Someone asks your advice about whether their writing style is more “McSweeney’s” or “HTML Giant.”
You see someone reading When I Have My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present and give them a hug.
You meet someone who still says “‘zine” and immediately realize that despite your best efforts, it will be impossible to lose them for the rest of the weekend.
Former n+1 interns hazing wannabe n+1 interns.
A conversation or two about ableism.
Functional alcoholics doing poetry readings while alluding to their inebriated condition for street cred. Same person later claims to “not be that inspired” by Bukowski.
