#0037 Lightbulbs, Acronyms, Redwoods: Go!
Creative communities at conferences, residencies, and retreats
A hackneyed joke: How many creatives does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Here’s. Some. Of. The. Answers.
Whenever I hear a lightbulb joke, I visualize people coming together. Kinda in community? Last time I wrote about finding creative communities via meetups, workshops, gatherings, and groups (see #0036).
This time, I’d like to talk about conferences, residencies, and retreats as places for writers and other creatives to seek out community.
It’s easier to embrace rejection together.
conferences
Soon after I started to wonder about how I might get a piece of my writing published, I began to read about the world of publishing beyond newspaper coverage of the big New York publishing houses. Articles mentioned “AWP” in passing. Then I noticed people at writer groups and gatherings drop the acronym casually into conversation. What was this “AWP” thing, I asked the interwebs.
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) — Why only one W instead of two? I dunno — is famous for its ginormous annual conference that hopscotches from one US city to another. This year it was held in Kansas City, Missouri, in February. Brrr!
(It ran the four days leading up to the Kansas City Chiefs winning Super Bowl Sunday in Las Vegas, Nevada. I guess “starving writers in MFA programs” and “Chiefs super fans with money to burn” don’t have much Venn diagram overlap?)
What’s the conference about? I’ll let AWP brag:
It includes thousands of attendees, hundreds of events and bookfair exhibitors, and four days of essential literary conversation and celebration. The AWP Conference & Bookfair has always been a place of connection, reunion, and joy, and we are excited to see the writing community come together again in Los Angeles, California in 2025.
That’s right, AWP will be back at the LA Convention Center March 26–29, 2025. I hope to go. Last time it landed in LA in 2016 (right after I figured out what the what), I attended. Only on the final day.
At that time, AWP sold discounted conference passes for the last half-day of the conference. Since all the affordable hotels near the convention center were sold out, and I didn’t feel up to commuting to and from LA multiple times (or at all, thank goodness for Metrolink), a half-day conference pass sounded fine by me.
Also, at that point in my chemobrained recovery, I didn’t want to get too overwhelmed. All the panel choices! So many floors and halls to navigate! Hot rooms, cold corridors, blinky fluorescent lights, squawking mics, clusters of crowds… Where’s a restroom? Will the elevator work? Does the escalator take me where I want to go? OMG so many exhibitors with stuff: swag and ephemera and, because it was the last day, and the exhibitors didn’t want to ship home heavy boxes: FREE JOURNALS AND BOOKS. The vibe, with thousands gathered together to focus on the love of writing and reading —my people! — blew me away. Quite a fun and exhausting time.
residencies
Before a global pandemic locked down the world, I read about opportunities where I could get away from daily life to write. Most I would need to use my own money or frequent flier miles to travel to, but these places seemed dreamy. They would house, feed, and water me, often for only the price of literary citizenship. In 2016, I applied to several and got one.
For two weeks in the summer of 2016, I stayed at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, located in the hills above Santa Cruz, California, for one of the emerging writer residencies. I wrote fiction and nonfiction, pushing myself to try more, different, harder. I took in books loaded on my kindle and iPhone in the evenings. Though I had hours to read, think, and write, I also had time to be with the other handful of writers in residency, most there for one-week stints, during our evening communal dinners. I connected with them over dinner conversation, but the camaraderie ended after the stay in the woods. And I met with Steve, the residency cohost, journalist, and published author, who gave big-picture advice on next steps in my writing. He and I have occasionally emailed. So, this residency gave me a short-term creative community.
I so enjoyed the residency and have been tempted by many others, including Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Headlands Center for the Arts. Here’s the thing: residencies can run anywhere from two weeks to a year and often require an application many, many months in advance.
My co-parenting agreement makes it challenging to apply for residencies when I don’t know the summer schedule until a few weeks ahead of the end of the school year. Plus, I hadn't wanted to miss witnessing my child blossom from a youngling to a tween to a teen, and I don’t want to miss out on seeing this child of mine evolve toward (the beginnings of) adulthood. So I’m shelving residencies for a few more years.
retreats
Retreats come in different flavors. Generally, participants pay for all aspects of retreats.
Some are glamorous and intimate all-inclusive affairs led by someone with connections in publishing, others include guest workshop leaders with experience teaching aspects of craft. Sometimes retreats are short-term rentals for solo writing time, perhaps with one gathering of other creatives that overlap with your stay. I’ve read about DIY retreats, where a writer stays at a hotel for a weekend or joins with writer friends to write and share progress at an AirBnB. Another DIY retreat is when a writer stays in a room of her own, requesting the household to leave her be.
I’ve never done a retreat, but that’s okay. Each week I have quiet time (joint custody) where it’s just Rexi the Cat Queen and me that need tending. If I have the money to travel, I choose to connect with family and friends, which nourishes my creative self-expression.
You can find conferences, residencies, and retreats for all sorts of creative communities happening throughout the year. Some are genre specific (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc.), some for particular participants (women, BIPOC, LGBTQAI+, etc.), many are regional or run by associations, literary organizations, or schools.
a gift
When you join with others — at a conference, residency, or retreat, at meetups, workshops, gatherings, or groups — in pursuit of sharing your creative self-expression, it’s a gift of mental and emotional support. Give yourself a creative community present.
Next time: School’s out!
Looking up the Wellstone Center!