This is it—you’re in the final stretch! Your thesis is due on Friday. To some of you I know that still sounds like a death sentence. You don’t feel ready at all to give up working on this thing that has been such a huge part of your life for the past months. It isn’t ready! This past weekend you thought of something that should really be an entire section of your thesis, but at this point you only have time to shoehorn it in the last few sentences, or just ignore it. You can think of about seventeen ways in which it could be so much better. Well guess what. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, because my preceptor said it to me—when it comes to the thesis, done is better than good. Perfect is the enemy of the great. Or, as my mother would tell me, it is time to put your thesis in a lockbox and send it to Jesus. Take your pick, I have lots of folksy advice for you guys. 

But there’s another way to look at this—in four short days, you will be free. It will be in to your advisor (and in to me, in PDF form!) and out of your hands forever. Or at least for a few years, until you decide you want to look at it again and maybe turn it into something else. Maybe the paper you wanted it to be now, but don’t have time for. Or a dissertation. Or a multi-media art project. Decoupage it, I don’t know. The point is that you’re almost done. And to celebrate, here are just a few ways I’ve come up with for you to celebrate this weekend. You’ve earned it!

1. Come to the Thesis BBQ on Friday.

MAPH will be providing loads of free food and booze on Friday afternoon from 1-3 outside of Cobb. This is the perfect incentive to get your thesis turned in a little early so you can languish in the sunshine with friends and free food, knowing you’re done! The Thesis BBQ is a crucial MAPH event for celebration and closure, so don’t miss it!

2. Bike the Drive

On Sunday from 5-11, the city is shutting down Lake Shore Drive for a huge bike marathon called Bike the Drive. Tune up your bike and join thousands of Chicagoans who take over the highway for six hours once a year to enjoy the sunshine and beautiful lakeside views. You’ll need to register soon in order to participate, and it’s a little pricey. But even if you don’t have the cash to do the official marathon, just take your bike out and ride around in the sunshine for a little while. Listen to Nina Simone, wear a beret. Do you!

3. See a Show

Finishing your thesis might just be the kick in the butt you need to get out of Hyde Park. Some fantastic shows are happening this weekend, of all varieties:

• Music and Dance: Chance the Rapper, 19-year-old Chicago-based MC whose free mixtape is blowing up right now, is playing at Metro on Saturday and Sunday nights at 7pm. Or if you just feel like dancing, come to The Empty Bottle in the Ukranian Village on Saturday for their monthly Windy City Soul Night, where dueling DJs spin nothing but soul records all night long!
• Theater and Film: Lear, an experimental deconstruction of its namesake play set in modern times, is being put on at Red Tape Theater on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Or you can check out Safety Last at the Music Box, where they will be showing a restoration of this 1923 vaudevillian comedy complete with live organ accompaniment and a release party for their summer calendar!
•  Art and Museums: UChicago’s own Theaster Gates has an ongoing installation at the MCA called 13th Ballad, which is an extension of his 12 Ballads for Huguenot House installation in Hyde Park that completed last year. Or, for the more biologically-inclined of us, the Jellies exhibit has been extended at Shedd Aquarium! Come see Northeast Pacific Sea Nettle like these alongside a variety of other species.

As always, if you need any advice on how to get to these places, come by the office and ask one of us. We are pretty savvy about getting around Chicago without our own cars. We were in MAPH too, you know. Or if you just want to talk. As Bill so sweetly noted in his Mentor Weekly Update yesterday, you’ll be gone all too soon, and we’ll miss you!

This woman is HIGHLY ambitious.

We know it might seem like we’ve been withholding information about applying to PhD programs. For a little while, that was indeed the case. There are certain ways in which MAPH needs to be done for MAPH’s sake, and it’s important to explore other career options outside of “THE ACADEMY.” But by now, many of you are still probably on the PhD bandwagon (or at least very seriously considering hitching a ride) and the time to start thinking about your next steps is now. So, throughout the rest of the quarter, we have a series of PhD application and academic professionalization events that we think you should go to. (Oh, and read this article – it’s distressing and refreshing all at the same time, and does a good job of outlining the types of questions you want to ask yourself as you weigh this decision.) 

“How to Give a Talk” Panel: Friday, May 3rd, 2:00 – 3:30 in Classics 110

This promises to be an extremely valuable event with some indispensable advice from your friendly neighborhood preceptors. Especially if you are planning on presenting at the MAPH Thesis Works-in-Progress event, you should definitely attend this event. Some topics to be discussed: Knowing Your Audience, Structuring a Talk, Presenting with A/V Components and Fielding Q&As. Actually talking about your work is a lot different from writing about your work, and this event aims to help you think about those differences. Come prepared with questions!

MAPH Thesis Works-in-Progress: Friday, May 10th, various times and locations

Once we’ve received applications from everyone, we will finalize the schedule for this event and let you all know via e-mail. (Check your email!) This is a great opportunity to try your hand at some of the skills discussed at the “How to Give a Talk” panel. Practice presenting your work to an audience (presumably) previously uninformed about your topic. (Alliteration!) This is a great way to get some low-stress experience in the presentation arena. Even if you decide not to present, come out and support your friends and their work. This event epitomizes what MAPH is all about, and it’s one of the most exciting and well-attended events of the year. Check out the previous e-mail for application guidelines. Those are due to Chrissy by May 7th at 12:00 Noon. The application itself is also a great excuse to practice abstract-writing.

Faculty Panel – Applying to PhD Programs: Friday, May 31st:  2:00-3:30 in Classics 110

You want the inside scoop? We’ve got the inside scoop. Faculty panelists from various departments in the Humanities Division will be on hand to speak about different aspects of the PhD application process (Statements of Purpose, What PhD Admissions committees might be looking for, etc. etc.) and answer questions. Yes, we are intentionally creating an air of mystique around this event. You’ll just have to come and find out for yourselves. Be prepared for information that is various combinations of useful, hopeful, traumatic, and horrifying.

COME TALK TO YOUR MENTORS: All day, erryday in MAPHCentral

Bill and Chrissy just went through the PhD application process (successfully) this past year, and have plenty of thoughts on how to compile an application to doctoral programs – and how not to lose your mind whilst doing so. Or talk to Ian about the grim sense of self-satisfaction he must have had whilst watching his colleagues go through this process. Come pick our brains. TAKE US FOR A WALK IN THE SUNSHINE. WE LIKE TO FROLIC, TOO, YOU KNOW.

Your brain on externships.

Next Tuesday, April 30th, we will be holding an Information Session for Externships at 12pm in Classics 110. It will only be 30 minutes and packed with valuable information, so you should definitely attend if at all possible!

In the hopes of getting you interested, here are 7 great reasons I just came up with to apply for externships this summer:

1. It’s easy.

You’re already busy preparing resumes for internships, the mentorship and/or other jobs after you graduate; it should be relatively easy to recycle some of those materials into another application or three. The externship applications should be a breeze compared to the others on your plates right now. Unlike the other applications, however, this one is through the Career Advancement website—more details will be available at the info session on Tuesday.

2. You want to get out of town.

Hong Kong, a place where there are externships.

Maybe you’re already planning on leaving Chicago when the program is up, or maybe you just want to get out for a weekend. Externships are available from Omaha, Nebraska to New York—from Denver, Colorado to Hong Kong! What’s more, there is some funding available to help students cover travel costs for externships outside of Chicagoland. Make sure to ask Sara Bosworth about it at the info session!

3. You want to try something new without any risk.

There are a wide array of externships available in a variety of fields, some of which you might have found vaguely interesting but never seriously considered. Try a day with Scrappers Film Group, the Chicago group that made one of Roger Ebert’s Top 10 Documentaries of 2010. Or with the Exceptional Children’s Foundation who work with developmentally disabled children. If you want to take a break from humanities, try a few days with people and businesses in medicine, science & technology, government or the financial sector.

4. You’ve been meaning to go to ________ anyway.

There are externships available at some amazing cultural institutions in Chicago. The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Science & Industry, The Art Institute and the Hyde Park Art Center all offer externships. So if you haven’t had a chance to get to these in your MAPH year, now is the perfect time to see the sights while learning about potentially working there!

5. You want to make connections but hate networking events.

Everyone hates networking. Standing awkwardly in at the corner of a conversation that you aren’t actively participating in, smiling and trying to look hirable while quietly and nervously sipping barely tolerable wine? Yeah. The externships are a free and easy way to get tons of one-on-one time with alumni in fascinating careers at their places of work. You don’t have to pretend small-talk over cheese; just go with lots of questions and end up with valuable contacts.

Literally me, on your back about externships.

6. You are tired of talking to us about it.

This could be a great way to get advice about life after MAPH from alumni who, I don’t know, don’t still work at MAPH. Not to knock myself and the other staff, but we only have so much insight (a LOT, but not an infinite amount) to give on how you can instrumentalize your degree. This is a great, low-stress way to hear about the logistical possibilities of different career trajectories. Plus, there’s the added bonus of getting us off your freaking back about it!

7. You will be out of school in 8 weeks.

Remember what I said about getting us off your back? I know you’re tired of hearing about this by now, and you might feel swamped with thesis and coursework and everything else, but I am urging you to do everything you possibly can starting now to get ready for next year. I promise you will feel so much better if you have an externship or two lined up for the summer. They aren’t jobs, but they’re certainly a step in the right direction—and a heck of a lot easier to get!

If this post has done anything to pique your interest, come by the office. We have info sheets detailing some of the available externships as well as information on applying. And of course, be sure to come to Classics 110 next Tuesday for the info session. See you there!

The short answer? It’s MAPH’s online magazine of awesome stuff.

The longer answer? Well, that takes a bit of explaining…

I remember looking around Social Sciences 122, the grand room that marked my first weeks of lecture* at University of Chicago. I swooned at the elaborate wood-paneled walls, the layered chalkboards sliding up and down, the archaic light fixtures. I remember Professor Wray reciting the Big Names who had lectured in SS122, from Hannah Arendt to Slavoj Žižek. I looked around at a room full of strangers, and I wondered if there was an Arendt or a Žižek among us. Toward the end of my MAPH year, I knew the answer to that question….

*also called Colloquium, leading to frequent casual confusion

The answer wasn’t about who was the smartest talker or the best writer or the deepest thinker. It wasn’t about who was going to grow up and get famous. It wasn’t about Arendt and it definitely wasn’t about Žižek. The answer had to do with getting together, building ideas with others, and being part of a conversation that we cared about.

At the University of Chicago and in MAPH in particular, we become part of this community of humanists, world-changers, and fierce question-askers. We chase the ineffable and, in one form or another, we chronicle that pursuit. Those chronicles are how we talk together when we can’t talk together. When we founded Colloquium last year, it was to give a home to these chronicles-as-conversations.

Colloquium is run entirely by MAPH students and alumni. We launched our first issue in October 2012, and we’re building our spring issue now, which will launch in late April. It’s amazing. Issue 2.1 has Bauhaus, the Italian avant-garde, rebels and militants, sitars and soundscapes, three poets, short fiction, a cat called Mouloud, and a not-inconsiderable-amount of spectroscopy. And, dare I say it, even more.

Big things are coming from Colloquium. Issues 2.2 and 2.3 are on the drawing board already, and soon we’ll be launching some (still very top-secret) new features. We hope you’ll join us as readers and contributors in our little corner of the human conversation.

[SPECIAL BONUS QUESTION]

Some people ask us: why do you use the “Q” as your logo?

The answer is simple: because it is the most bad-ass of all the letters.

 On Campus

First things first, just wander around. The campus is rarely prettier than it is in the spring; if the weather is good, a leisurely stroll through the arches and  across the quads really can’t be beat. If walking around aimlessly is not your thing, or if you have exhausted your aimless walking possibilities and you want a specific destination, we are partial to the Oriental Institute. The collection is fantastic (and really, really old), the building is beautiful, and admission is free (although the museum suggests a donation).

Also worth checking out is the Mansueto Library,a giant glass and steel ellipsoid on 57th Street that contains fancy robots that brings you books by request from deep inside the earth. It’s really cool.

Off Campus

Go to the lake. More specifically, go to Promontory Point. (It’s a short walk from campus and well worth it.) Or go to the DuSable Museum. Or browse in one of the excellent bookstores that Hyde Park is home to: Powell’s, tons of used books at great prices (1501 E 57th St, Chicago, IL); 57th St Books, a great general interest bookstore in which to wile away the hours (1301 E 57th St  Chicago, IL 60637); The Seminary Co-op, one of the best books stores in the whole wide world (5751 South Woodlawn Avenue).

Food/Coffee/Strong Drink

Z&H (1323 E. 57th St) has tasty, tasty sandwiches and good coffee. Bonjour Bakery (1550 East Hyde Park Blvd) makes a mean croque monsieur and really good croissants. Rajun Cajun (1459 E. 53rd St) Despite its misleading name, this place has tasty Indian food. Oh, the samosas! Valois (1518 E. 53rd St) is a classic cafeteria and a Hyde Park institution.

Robust (63rd and Woodlawn), The Sip (5301 S Hyde Park Blvd), the aforementioned Z&H, and Café 57 (1520 E. 57th St) all serve pretty good coffee (Z&H is the best, in our opinion.)

There are a couple of good bars in Hyde Park (they are dive-y in a pleasant way). The Cove (1750 E 55th St) has a fun jukebox and darts and foosball. Jimmy’s (Woodlawn Tap) (1172 E 55th St) is just a few blocks from campus and has cheap burgers and fries. It’s a classic college-town bar.

If you want still more suggestions, just email us. We will be happy to point you in the best direction.

The new Harper Court on 53rd will be the location of the first new hotel in Hyde Park in over 50 years. The Hyatt Place Hotel will open up this fall, along with an LA Fitness and a Chipotle in the same building. The Hyatt will be a great option for visiting friends and family who you may not feel like hosting on your couch and/or floor for the weekend. Plus, we hear they will be offering discounted rates for UChicago customers! You can read about the Harper Court project here.

The new Harper Theater opened up at 53rd and Harper earlier this year on January 18th. This theater shows some art films, local cinema and documentaries, but also generally shows newer releases than Doc Films. So it should be a good alternative when you want to catch the latest releases but don’t want to hike all the way downtown to see them at one of the massive AMC Theaters. Student tickets are a cheap $7 ($8 otherwise for adults, and $6 matinee!), and the theater boasts a cute cafe with Medici-imported croissants and delicious Metropolis coffee. It’s also across the street from Kilwins, a delicious ice cream shop and another recent addition to the 53rd Street Corridor.

 Current students might have noticed the new Akira clothing store on 53rd. In that same building, the famous Longman & Eagle will be opening up a second restaurant. Longman & Eagle is originally from Logan Square (my hood!) and they are known for their upscale American cuisine and tasty, tasty brunch. That same building will house a yoga studio for Hyde Park residents, as well as a new live music venue!

This post is just a taste of some of the exciting changes coming to the 53rd Street Corridor. For more information, please check out the UChicago-run 53rd Street blog, which will be providing updates on the street’s progress throughout the coming year.

Every summer, MAPH partners with some of the most respected humanities-driven organizations in the city of Chicago and provides summer internship opportunities to a select number of MAPH graduates. (Yes, soon you will be graduates, and not students!) These internships provide our students with invaluably applicable professional experience, while also giving them the opportunity to spend their summer in the great (and yes, it does get warm!) city of Chicago. Oh, and did we mention that these opportunities are paid?

In this very special edition of MAPHtastic, we will be giving you as much information as humanly (and technologically) possible about these various opportunities. Click through the following links to learn more about the internship opportunities that interest you most. And, as always, please let us know if there’s anything else that you would like to know about them!

Browne and Miller Literary Associates: Publishing Internship

Browne and Miller is Chicago’s only independent, full-service literary agency. There is lots of great information on their website, and also on last year’s MAPHtastic post for you to peruse. Some great things for you to know from the get-go: MAPH Alum and former Browne and Miller Intern, Anna Jarzab (’07) published her first novel, All Unquiet Things with the agency. Additionally, last year’s intern, Jonathan Baker (’12) leveraged his experience at Browne and Miller to find a job in publishing in New York City.

Chicago History Museum: Curatorial Internship

This internship is with the museum’s Curatorial Affairs Department and is a great opportunity for anyone seeking a career in curation. Located in the beautiful Lincoln Park, the Chicago History Museum is one of those city institutions that has major appeal. The curatorial intern helps the team with project planning, audience research, collections research and content research and development. One of the most exciting parts of this internship is that no two MAPHers ever have the same experience, since their exhibitions are constantly changing. This summer, their featured exhibit is called Shalom, Chicago - the museum’s first ever exhibit on the history of Jewish Chicago. You can check out the rest of their current exhibits here.

Also be sure to check out Deborah Blumenthal’s (’11) reflection on the internship from a few summers ago. Although Deborah studied Theatre during her MAPH year, and presently continues to work with various theaters around the city of Chicago, this proved to be an invaluable experience for her. Just goes to show that sometimes you have to be a little creative to see how some opportunities may be be applicable to your career path!

Chicago Humanities Festival: Programming Internship

Each summer, the Chicago Humanities Festival provides affordable public programming in the humanities. Committed to fostering community engagement, the Festival features content from some of the most innovative humanities scholars and contributors from around the country.  The programming intern is responsible for developing web and media content, aiding in coordination of education events and project management. Last year’s CHF MAPH intern, Marlee Prutton (’12), has continued to work part-time for the organization since the completion of her internship.

Newberry Library: Manuscripts and Archive Internship:

Do you like books? (If not, then we may need to have another conversation in which we re-evaluate this whole grad-school thing.) The MAPH internship at the Newberry is a great opportunity for anyone who is interested in pursuing archival work, and it is such an oh-so-lovely place to work. As an intern at the Newberry, you will be responsible for handling lots of materials in their collection, and while learn a lot about archival practices. Colloquium’s own Senior Editor, Liz John (’12) held the internship last year, and has nothing but good things to say about the experience. Emma Martin (’11) had the internship the year before and still works there—she just got a promotion, in fact! And hey, if you don’t find a career at the Newberry, you might at least find a wedding venue.

 Newcity: Editorial Internship

Hone your writing chops with MAPH’s summer internship at Newcity, one of Chicago’s leading cultural weekly magazines and websites. Learn to keep up in a fast-paced editorial environment, where deadlines are actually deadlines. Newcity hosts MAPH’s only “virtual” internship – where your work will mostly be conducted independently, via the interwebs (what a wonderful exercise in self-accountability!) So yeah, MAPH could potentially pay you to hang out in your pajamas all summer long. Or you could also play the role of the tortured freelancer, by exploring some of Chicago’s free wi-fi providing coffee shops! (With that fat MAPH check in your wallet, you could buy a lot of lattes.) This is the second year that Newcity is hosting a MAPH intern, but you can check out testimonials from some of their other past interns here.

The Odyssey Project: Programming Internship

The Odyssey Project is one of those immensely cool Chicago organizations that helps MAPH students channel their interest in the Humanities into impactful, inspiring and real-world-applicable work. The Project is a college-level course in philosophy, literature, art history, and history for men and women living at or below 150% of the poverty level, and for which they may earn 6 units of college credit. Founded on the premise that a liberal education should empower people and that engagement with the humanities can provide people with resources to better their lives, the Odyssey Project provides free college-level education to dozens of students per year.

MAPH’s own Hilary Strang has instructed courses with the Odyssey Project for a few years now, and she would be happy to answer any questions that you may have about the internship, or about the Project in general. Lastly, be sure to check out this post on afterMAPH by Anna Burch (’12) and Marybeth Southard (’12), who completed the internship through MAPH last summer.

Smart Museum: Communications Internship 

Located in our own beautiful Hyde Park, MAPH’s internship at the Smart Museum is the perfect opportunity for someone planning to pursue career opportunities in the arts or public policy sector. As an intern at the Smart, you will be responsible for engaging with and building new audiences, developing projects for digital publication and community outreach. This summer, the MAPH intern will be working on programming for the Fall 2013 exhibition and for the Museum’s monthly social hour series, At the Threshold.  You can check out the museum’s current exhibitions here. Even though I’m sure that lots of our Art Historians will be jumping at this internship, we would actually encourage anyone who is interested in marketing, communications, or the non-profit sector to apply for this one. If you’re interested, you should check out MAPH alum and former Smart Museum intern Diego Arispe-Bazan’s (’11) piece on his time at the Smart here.

And that’s it for now! We’ll be having an Internship Kickoff event in the first week of Spring quarter as well, so come with all your questions.

“AWP is like a music festival,” a friend told me last week.  “You have to have a really solid plan so you can see most of the stuff that you want to.”

Okay, I thought, maybe.  Maybe that is how you do music festivals.  With a plan. I, on the other hand, tend to show up with a vague idea of what is going on when and wait for people and/or circumstances to guide me to the good stuff.

But I took her advice; I pretended like I was at a music festival. I thumbed through the heavy directory, letting my eyes settle on random pages so that the titles of events jumped out at me haphazardly.  I listened to the advice of my fellow MAPH people and sometimes followed them places. I skipped readings and panels that were probably informative or even enlightening.  On Saturday afternoon, I ran over to Charlestown to spend an hour nervously holding my cousin Vicky’s fragile, squirming newborn when I could have been, I don’t know, acquiring more half-priced copies of Tin House?

However, even without a  coherent plan, I got a lot out of my first time at AWP. I practiced talking to people: about MAPH, about submitting to journals, about how to practice talking to people.  I made eye contact with Tea Obreht more than once and definitely soaked up some of her powers as a result.  I even learned how to respond to the question “Are you a writer?” without choking and violently tugging at my hair.  (Okay, that’s a lie. I will always hate answering that question.)  And, thanks to the great directory-reading abilities of my MAPH friends, I sat in on relevant and informative panels, including one dedicated to writing in the first person plural, as I am doing in my thesis. The organizers of that panel also run a reading series in Harlem that explores this kind of narration, and Justin Torres, one of the authors I am reading for my critical component, participated in the talk. Pretty convenient. At the end, one of the organizers agreed to correspond with me about my project and Torres told me that he “couldn’t wait to see it,” which was sweet and encouraging if not realistic.

It turns out that the people of AWP are a predictably eccentric bunch who scurry around decked out in variations on the “writer” outfit: tweed, glasses, wrinkled button-ups.  The pinging of iPhones and the repetition of phrases like “my MFA” and “your Submittable account”  punctuate their conversations.  Some attendees stare directly into your eyes for too long while they tell you about their important and potentially imaginary screenplay; others never let their gaze leave the table as they scan it for free books. Certain individuals exhibit an unusual drive to collect as many buttons and flyers as possible.*  Overall though, despite the tendency of many to bemoan the very premise of a writer’s conference, there was an undeniable energy racing through the windowless rooms of Hynes Convention Center this past weekend.  The fact is that it is exciting to admit that you want to turn something that you love into some kind of career.  Yeah, it is scary, and at times you feel like a fraud, but when you are milling around a giant space with tons of other people who share your aspirations, and some of them have even realized them, it is possible to feel a little free, a little confident.  You at least know that you are in good company.

The conference ended as it should have—with a dance party.  Now, two days later, my legs hurt, I have a mysterious bruise on my collarbone, and I may or may not have dozed off and briefly let my head rest of the shoulder of a university press’ acquisitions editor on the plane ride home. Nevertheless, I am pretty sure the whole thing turned out way better than I could have planned.

*Including some poor, bored nine-year-old girl who got dragged there and stuck wearing a nametag that read “Awesome Kid” and a man who was apparently searching for our Colloquium buttons all over the book fair (“People have been talking about these ‘Q’ buttons”)…

- Jessi Haley (MAPH ’13) has a BA in History from Skidmore College, some professional experience making binders and sandwiches, and is now working on a short story collection for her MAPH thesis.

The Bookfair

 My first AWP, I imagined that someone would ask to read my work, I would meet my future publisher, and maybe there would even be a parade with confetti announcing my presence to the writing world. Or, I didn’t so much imagine this scenario, as find myself surprised when it didn’t happen. Instead, I had a few awkward conversations, bought too many journals I was never going to read, and felt a kind of agony of irrelevance — a stark reminder that I capable of intense egoism and insecurity.

My second AWP, I did a little better. I took home a few journals that helped me find new places to send my work — having not backed away awkwardly from tables or hastily grabbed what someone tried to sell me, but instead stood at their tables reading long enough to decide I liked their journals. I managed to learn a little about book contests, since I was finishing my first manuscript. I also met an editor or two from journals that had published my work. Of course, not to paint too rosy a picture, one editor told me, when I realized I had “introduced myself” without giving my name and belatedly told him who I was, that it didn’t really matter since he wasn’t going to remember my name in a few months anyway.

This AWP, I learned less, since I was more familiar with the presses and book contests, but I still picked up a few new ideas about where I could submit. I put my first book in the hands of two people who might review it, and my editor sold copies of my book (mostly to people who know me), and I sold copies of my book (also mostly to people who know me). I organized and gave a reading. I spent a lot of time with friends from my MFA and from my stay at the MacDowell Colony, and met a lot of friends of friends with whom I drank, talked about writing, and bemoaned how exhausting and overwhelming the conference is.

Quickly, AWP is getting smaller for me, even as it grows in attendees. My expectation are getting lower, even as the real benefits are increasing. And more than any “professional development,” those moments of community-building (i.e. the consumption of alcohol) are more important and hearteningly, less part of the industrial complex of writing. By now, I firmly understand that AWP is largely the commercial side of my artistic practice, and that, as for most writers, scrappily fighting their way for a small amount of recognition, it is a practically expedient side. The key, I think, is viewing AWP as a practice scrimmage with a process we’ll have to undergo for the rest of our lives: how to deal with publishing as an industry, while maintaining our sense of artistic urgency and integrity.

- Ariana Nadia Nash (MAPH ’13)  is the author of Instructions for Preparing Your Skin, winner of the 2011 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry. She is a current MAPH student and an alum of the MFA program at University of North Carolina Wilmington.

The 2013 AWP Conference & Book Fair is held at John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center in the Back Bay streets of Boston. Once most people finish reading the center’s name, they take a nap and then go inside. In the 193,000 sq. ft. building there are 8 billion people and they have all written a book or a poem or frequently have creative ideas. These people walk around many tables that also have books and magazines and ideas on stickers and people who have jobs sit behind these tables and say many nice things to those who do not. UChicago’s MAPH program has a table at Booth 2811 on the second floor and there are very good looking people behind it, which is necessary because there are lines to meet them and less attractive people might not be able to manage the task as well.

On Thursday night at 6:30, the 2013 Keynote Presentation, a conversation between Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott moderated by Rosanna Warren, celebrated the successful opening day of AWP Boston. Warren declared the conversation a draw on the account that no one could understand their accents, though most favored Heaney as the winner due to his ability to make speech sound like a fawn lapping water from a brook in solstice moonlight. Everyone agreed, however, that it’s a good thing both Laureates use the medium of writing for their art and that Walcott had a mustache but Heaney did not. On Friday afternoon, Don DeLillo gave a reading from his work and participated in a conversation with himself because everyone in the audience was very busy whispering: “It’s Don DeLillo, It’s Don DeLillo.”

The lengthily named John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center

When not looking at famous people’s faces making speeches, AWP attendees have the opportunity to browse hundreds of booths and tables that support and contribute to the international community of writers and believers. The conference is a testament to the diversity* of thinkers dedicated to laboring for an art. Most of the art here will remain art that no one ever reads and history will phase over the canon with the sound of wind in a maritime painting. But the beautiful thing is that here every person is a big deal to at least one other person in the world. That is why someone published their work, because one person believed more people should know how they see the world. AWP is an Additional-Mother Depot™ where people come to have just one, if only one other person who thinks what they did is special. And it is remarkable.

*AWP would like to remind all those who were unable to attend this year that it encourages diversity and the participation of individuals in its activities regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, opinion towards modernism, socioeconomic status, propensity to use the word ‘vulgar’ before nouns with productive suffixes, age, disability, or religious or political belief. Someone suggested that this would be a very good policy for the American government to practice and another person made a note to make sure to mention it to Congress after the conference was over.

“Charlie Puckett is fervently enjoying his time at AWP Boston with special friends from MAPH.”