Erika Dreifus

[UPDATES follow this post.]

Please find below the message that I’ve sent this morning to the Director of Conferences for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

As you may know, AWP is an organization that describes its mission and vision as “amplif[ying] the voices of writers and the academic programs and organizations that serve them while championing diversity and excellence in creative writing.” And it describes its annual conference and bookfair, which in 2025 will take place in March in Los Angeles: as “the essential gathering for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers. Join thousands of attendees, explore hundreds of events and exhibitors, and immerse in four days of vital literary community and celebration in Los Angeles!”

I attended my first AWP Conference and Bookfair in 2001; I last attended in 2022. I can attest that “thousands” do attend. For many, particularly those immersed in academic and independent creative-writing programs, it is something of an “essential” gathering.

I have concluded that my own (years of) discreet outreach on this front have yielded little result. At this time, I am providing the receipts, so to speak, for others to read, evaluate, and/or share further. Perhaps others—including others with larger platforms than mine—will be able to succeed where I have not.

Shana tova yoteir,
Erika

I sent the text above to a bcc’d group of colleagues/journalists this morning.

Below is the text of the message that I’d sent AWP’s conference director shortly before that, which I am now sharing publicly.

Dear Colleen:

I cannot tell you how painful it is to have to write to you again in this context. As you may recall, my outreach to AWP on this subject dates back five years. (I will append a compilation of correspondence beginning in 2019 to help refresh your memory.)

Today, however, it seems fruitless for me to expend similar energies. Instead, I will point you to two resource documents that I have compiled over the past year for general reference and edification: “After October 7: Readings, Recordings, and More” (https://bit.ly/46QdMM1) and “Writers, Beware” (https://bit.ly/47vTyHl). I will add that I have routinely tagged AWP on social media in efforts to convey elements of what you’ll find included within these documents; although I well know that one cannot catch everything that’s shared on such platforms, and that nothing is guaranteed to “trickle up,” I cannot help but wonder if anything ever has. Perhaps that will be a matter to take up with your staff.

And I will share with you what I posted earlier this morning within a private online group of Jewish women writers. I was responding to others’ comments on a thread, now some days old, regarding the list of accepted events for the March 2025 conference. (Again for your edification, I will also append, below my signature, a sampling of what I can assure you I am not alone in finding, in aggregate and in the absence of any remotely comparable representation for alternate views [and I’ve already been made aware of at least one relevant session proposal that AWP rejected], to be utterly outrageous.)

I encourage everyone to follow up. Without going into too many details, I can tell you that although I did not attend last year’s conference and did not engage directly with AWP in that instance, I have tried the polite, patient, behind-the-scenes approach with AWP and “problematic” panel issues since 2019. I provided them with ample, clarifying material and accepted (gratefully) the minimal accommodation they made after months of exchanges. In 2022, when a similar situation arose, I was assured (by the same conference director who is still in place) that “moving forward, we’ll have a greater review process for accepted events, which will include more review oversight from our board and senior staff, so we can catch potentially problematic issues before accepted events are released.” At this point, I can only conclude that they intended to “placate” me while not only failing to institute the promised guardrails, but making even more egregious decisions. I have not yet reminded the director of this–I have been too busy with High Holy Days/Oct. 7 to devote the extensive time and energy that I typically need for this sort of correspondence. I am also outraged that I find myself in the position of having to attempt it once again, five years after I began. Finally: While I hold out hopes for the new Jewish Caucus, I am also deeply concerned that the leadership’s laudable ideal of a non-political approach will preclude effective advocacy in what is clearly a very politicized organization, one that has made it abundantly clear that it not only permits but actually amplifies the toxicity of other stakeholders who don’t hesitate to politicize themselves. That is all I am prepared to say here at this moment. But again, I DO encourage others to contact AWP. I think it is ESSENTIAL that they understand that the image their conference projects about Israel and Zionism is not one that the majority of the world’s Jews shares, let alone a factually accurate or complete one about the terrible last year (which is another sort of professional malpractice for what is, in many ways, an academic professional association). They need to hear from you.

One final point: In case you have not yet seen it (although, again, I’ve tagged AWP when amplifying elsewhere), I will also point you to former AWP award-winner Sarah Einstein’s public post on Substack in response to the release of the accepted-events list: https://writingfamilyhistories.substack.com/p/the-essential-thing-is-not-to-fear. I very much hope that you will read it, if you haven’t yet done so.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Erika Dreifus

Our Memory Will Not Be A Weapon: on Jewish Writing after October 7*

In-person event

Event category: Multiple Literary Genres Craft & Criticism

American Jewish writing has long been influenced by Holocaust memorialization. For decades, Jewish trauma has been weaponized to justify Israeli occupation of Palestine and military attacks on Gaza, and to censor dissent. As Jewish writers and organizers, we invite audiences to consider alternatives to militarized responses to genocidal histories. How does literature honor or mourn? How can we as writers grapple with collective inheritances without contributing to further harm?

Our Own Name: Writing Jewishness Beyond Zionism, Assimilation & Fear

In-person event

Event category: Multiple Literary Genres Craft & Criticism

How can contemporary poetry and prose trouble and disrupt associations, conflations, and assumptions about Jewish identity? In this panel, a diverse group of Jewish writers will grapple with the possibilities and limitations of writing about diasporic Jewish lives — beyond stereotype, assimilation, and Zionism. They will explore urgent and shifting questions about intention and audience for work that reflects the multiplicity of Jewish experience and confronts the weaponization of antisemitism.

Diasporic Dreaming: Anti-Zionist Jewish Writers On and Off the Page

In-person event

Event category: Artistic & Professional Development

As anti-Zionist Jewish writers, our writing provides a space for us to dream of a diasporic world where our Jewishness is about liberation and solidarity, and not bound up in a nation-state. As we bear witness to genocide in Gaza, centering anti-Zionist values in our work feels essential. What can an anti-Zionist Jewish literature look like? Five Jewish writers discuss how anti-Zionism shows on our pages, in our navigation of the literary landscape, and in our imaginations.

Fighting The Muzzle: Literary Organizing For Palestine During Genocide

In-person event

Event category: Program Development

The invasion and genocide of Gaza has cost the lives of almost 40,000 Palestinians. In the United States, even acknowledging this unconscionable atrocity has been labeled as “complicated.” The leaders of three prominent Arab/SWANA literary organizations (Mizna, RAWI, and Palestine Writes) discuss the ways they have been silenced trying to promote Palestinian, Arab, and Southwest Asian and North African literature, and the methods they’ve used to break through this silence.

The Velvet Air of Gaza: Protest and Beauty

In-person event

Event category: Multiple Literary Genres Readings

This multigenre reading by mostly Palestinian writers focuses on what it means to write in the face of genocide and the global student protests against it. How do our words transcend mere empathy and reach beyond it to achieve active solidarity? What is the relationship between beauty and protest? Between protest and language? How do these relationships inform love in the tradition of Black radical love? Our readings will illuminate some possible answers to these urgent questions of our time.

We Are Still Here: A Reading for Palestinian and Armenian Solidarity

In-person event

Event category: Multiple Literary Genres Readings

IALA (International Armenian Literary Alliance) presents a reading of multi-genre writers of Palestinian and Armenian descent. Their works in prose, poetry, and nonfiction examine culture and heritage in the diaspora despite ongoing campaigns of silencing by colonialist and fascist governments. In the face of exile and violence, our coalition fights for the recognition of our peoples’ safety and autonomy while celebrating writing as a continued form of resistance and survival

Queer Crip Worlds: Poetry as Portal for Transnational Solidarity

In-person event

Event category: Poetry Craft & Criticism

This panel brings queer and crip/disabled diasporic poets of color from Bangladesh, Colombia, Iran, and Pakistan, to consider the possibilities for using poetry as a portal connecting us from word to world. In the context of the US-backed genocide in Palestine and intersecting histories of conflict in our respective homelands, we will explore how poetry has been a vital queer and disability justice organizing tool and modality for building connection and solidarity across social movements.

*I have removed the names of panel participants from the session descriptions as re-printed in this post; I have no interest in having their Google alerts encourage them to come over to this space. But you can find the complete information provided in AWP’s list of accepted events.

[Update, October 15: Late yesterday afternoon, I received a response to the message that I sent to the Director of Conferences for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). I will post the text of her message in comments below. I will then leave it to readers to decide how responsive it actually is.]

[Update, November 15: Yesterday, AWP announced on social media that they’re “thrilled” to announce the conference’s “featured events.” The description for one of these sessions begins as follows: “As we mourn the Gazan lives, communities, and infrastructure destroyed by escalating Zionist genocide….” Everything that AWP says and does (or doesn’t say or do) now is clearly a choice.]

[Update, November 23: A few days ago, AWP erroneously sent out to its entire mailing list a message intended only for a subset of participants in its upcoming conference. Which means that I received it. Before AWP sent a subsequent email explaining the mistake, I took the occasion to draft one more message to the conference director. I received an auto-response indicating that she would be out-of-office through Wednesday, November 20. I have not yet received a further response from her (nor, really, do I expect one). Here, however, is the text of what I sent on November 18.]