War-Mil-Vet Writing at AWP22

I’ll be on two panels at the upcoming Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference this week in Philadelphia.

I’m moderating one panel titled “Veterans Writing Online: A Field Guide for Negotiating the Digital Writing Sphere.” Here’s the program blurb:

Iraq and Afghanistan military-and-veteran writers have enthusiastically embraced the internet to amplify their voices and build audiences through blogging, online publishing, remote workshopping, and social media promotion, and as a bridge to traditional print publication. The members of the panel, all accomplished authors, online journal editors, and teachers in the veteran-writing field, offer a range of perspectives regarding best online publishing practices, lessons learned, and future possibilities.

And a little more:

The vibrant veterans online writing realm emphasizes its commitment to new voices, diverse and radical perspectives, post-trauma growth, building communities, and bridging the civil-military divide. The panel explores how online writing supplements and serves as an alternative to traditional print publication by encouraging literary expression by new authors, women, non-binary, minority, and dissident veterans, as well as concerned-citizen writers, family members, and non-combatants.

After a little jockeying, the panel line-up has solidified in exciting ways: Ron Capps, Teresa Fazio, Kara Krauze, and Jennifer Orth-Veillon.

Showtime is Saturday, March 26, 10:35-11:50am in Room 124 in the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

I’m also participating on a panel sponsored by Jennifer Orth-Veillon titled “Family Heritage, Violent History: WWI’s Lost Transversality in War Poetry Today.” I’m honored for the chance to talk about World War I poet Aline Kilmer’s relevance to the current war-writing scene alongside panelists Seth Tucker, Connie Ruzich, and Drew Pham. Here’s the blurb:

WWI’s Centennial offered chances for today’s war writers to reflect upon literary debts owed to 1914-1918 poets in blogs, articles, and new work. This panel fuses history, literary analysis, and creative writing to explore this phenomenon. Members include veteran poets addressing issues of religion, family, sexuality, gender, and PTSD through WWI’s lens. WWI poetry and contemporary war literature experts propose insight into the intersections of personal experience, history, and literary craft.

WWI represents one of the first times in history poetry was responsible for exposing the new complexity of war wounds to the public. WWI elicited responses from diverse voices on the home front and battlefield that opened artistic spaces expressing war’s horrors in innovative ways. This panel reaches far beyond the traditional WWI canon and explores how these poets not only shaped civilian responses or crafted legacy but how they also set precedents for writers confronting today’s conflicts.

We’re meeting on Thursday, March 24 from 1:45 to 3:00pm in Room 121A in the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Looking forward to it all, and join us please if you will be at AWP. I’m not seeing any other panels on the program that directly address contemporary war-writing, which has me thinking. The conference used to be an important locus for the GWOT war-writing community, with many panels each year on war-and-vet writing and much socializing. That luster was beginning to fade even before Covid, and nothing I know of has replaced it (everything’s online!), but I’m hoping we can rekindle the spirt a little.