For myself, growing up literary in Denver included attendance and participation in spoken word readings at local coffee houses, discovery and frequenting of local used bookstores, and the adoption of a lifestyle favoring unconventional experience over conventional accomplishment. After my attendance of Vermont College’s low-residency program, where I went for a week to eleven days twice a year, flying or driving back and forth, I began making connections with published writers all over this country and planet earth. I stayed in Denver for various reasons, and despite the connectivity provided by the internet, always felt myself unfairly distanced from the new roots I’d developed as a writer.
From April 7-11, that will change when the internationally acclaimed Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) takes place at the Hyatt Regency Denver and Colorado Convention Center, and representatives of Vermont College of Fine Arts (including author Sue William Silverman) will be in attendance. Besides Silverman, several other authors will give readings, among them Nick Flynn, Sandra Cisneros, Joy Harjo, Gary Snyder, Anne Waldman and Michael Chabon, who will be giving a Keynote Address
AWP will feature a book fair and several literary agencies, grants foundations, publishing companies (including Copper Nickel, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and American Poetry Review) and graduate writing programs (among them the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Boulder’s Naropa University, the University of Denver and my alma mater, Vermont College) will have booths and tables featuring information about themselves and displaying their wares. Look forward to continuing updates on the event from this reporter.
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