The Essential Thing Is Not To Fear At All

A follow-up post to my thoughts on last year's AWP

In February of this year, I attended the annual AWP conference, which is the largest gathering of writers and creative writing professors in the county. It has been, for years, one of the most joyful parts of my year: a chance to connect with old friends, to listen to very smart people talk about innovations in writing, creative writing pedagogy, and other things in the profession about which I care deeply. At AWP 2024, there was no joy, as I wrote about in my newsletter AWP as a Narrow Place.

I had hoped that the work so many Jewish writers have done to reach out to, provide context for, and educate the leadership at AWP would have lead to positive changes this year, but instead, the conference has leaned in hard to antisemitism.

I would like to share with you the proposal text for a panel proposal that I was a part of, and which was rejected. I won’t share the names of the others involved, because I don’t have permission, but it was a list of luminaries.

Event Category: Multigenre Reading

Title:

 Spiritual Outsiders United: Writing Our Way to Collective Liberation

Description: (500 characters with spaces): This multigenre panel brings together Muslim and Jewish authors with complex cultural, ethnic, or racial identities at a time of escalated antisemitism and Islamophobia. Each will reflect on what it means to be a Jewish or Muslim author now, the struggles of belonging that inform their work, and how literary art fosters understanding amidst heightened conflicts. Join us to grapple with what it means to be an outsider within and beyond the communities we inhabit while working to build solidarity and collective liberation through literature.

(Statement of Value: (500 characters with spaces) Your statement of value is your opportunity to share the importance of your proposal with the conference subcommittee. Explain why the topic is of specific interest to conference attendees, how the event addresses specific needs of a constituency, how it is inclusive and diverse, and how it stands out among others. ) 

BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Latinx, immigrant, working class, and other underrepresented communities constitute a large segment of Jewish and Muslim writers. Their creative nonfiction and poetry disrupt common anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish biases that fuel division, violence, and misunderstanding. This multigenre reading brings Jewish and Muslim authors together to showcase the diversity of experiences within Islam and Judaism, foster understanding across complex differences, and center the activist role literature plays in helping us imagine a more just, equitable, and peaceful society.

The goal of the panel was to demonstrate that we can speak together, toward shared goals of peace and security for all. No panel with such a goal was accepted this year. There are, however, 5 panels that refer to the Hamas/Israel war as a “genocide” perpetrated against Palestinians. Of the 8 panels specifically about Jewish writing, 4 of them represent the fringe anti-Zionist Jewish movements, none of them represent Zionist or “Third Narrative” perspectives.

AWP has made what, to me, is an inexplicable choice to center the voices of war and terrorism and silence the voices of dissent. And it has not escaped the people speaking in the private places online Jewish writers now gather to speak that the announcement of accepted panels was made on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, when observant Jews would be offline for three days (two for the chag, one for shabbat), leaving only October 6th—the day before the anniversary of the worst pogrom since the Holocaust—for us to respond. It may have been born out of ignorance and oversight, rather than malice, but even if that is true, are we required to ignore harm done to us by not bothering to think of us?

I, and many of us, are wondering how we move forward in the spaces which were once central to our work, our friendships, and our callings when they have made the move in this moment to call for harm to be done to us. Do we wait it out, hoping that eventually more reasonable voices will prevail, and return when it’s safe to do so? Do we continue to try to educate those who have turned away from every attempt to do so, all our energies gone for naught? Or do, fearlessly, we burn those narrow bridges behind us?

I’m interested to hear from other Jewish writers, particularly those who—like me—once found a necessary and nurturing home in AWP are planning to respond. I’m just as interested to hear from other Jewish writers—also like me—who haven’t yet decided how to respond. Tell me what you think, friends*.

And a belated shana tova.

—Sarah

*If you are a Jewish writer who wants to post, and doesn’t have a paid subscription, just drop me a note and I’ll comp you. Posting is limited to paid subscribers as a small firewall against hateful posts. This is, after all, still the internet.