News and Events

WTAW will be at AWP

January has been flying by, and AWP is now only two short weeks away.

If you plan to be at AWP in Kansas City from February 7th–10th, you can connect with WTAW in two ways.

You can find us every day at the bookfair, at T1422, where copies of our latest titles will be on sale, seeking to fill your warm hands, hearts, and minds. We’ll have info on our publishing programs and other opportunities, including our new imprint Betty. We’re excited that publishing assistant Shirley Dees will be with us for her first-ever AWP conference. Shirley is a writer like the rest of the WTAW crew, so come by and greet her, even if only with a simple wave—a language any writer can understand and appreciate!

Book signings

Two of our authors will be with us at the bookfair on Friday, 2/9 to sign copies of their books:

11:00AM – 12:00pm: Stephanie Austin, Something I Might Say

1:30 – 2:30pm: Joanna Acevedo, Outtakes

Our off-site reading Wine and Words on Thursday, 2/8, 5:30–7:00 pm at The Pairing is another great way to connect with us—while reconnecting with words and why to write and read. WTAW will be pairing with Willow Springs magazine to present prose and poetry from eight featured writers who are not to be missed. A cash bar will be available and door prizes served alongside our writers’ words.

Readers include Alyse Knorr, Andrew Farkas, *Azaria Brown, *Joanna Acevedo, John Hodgen, *Liz Green, *Polly Buckingham, and Sara Burge. (*WTAW authors)

WTAW’s Hal King will be on hand to emcee and hand out prizes. Scroll down for short bios of each reader.

The AWP conference and bookfair is the largest gathering of publishers, authors, and academics in the nation, and we’d love to see you at WTAW’s small yet big warm space in the heart of America.

—The crew at WTAW Press

Words and Wine readers’ bios:

Alyse Knorr is an associate professor of English at Regis University, co-editor of Switchback Books, and co-producer of the Sweetbitter podcast. She is the author of four collections of poetry (most recently Ardor from Gasher Press), and two nonfiction books about video games (most recently GoldenEye from Boss Fight Books).

Andrew Farkas is the author of The Great Indoorsman: Essays, The Big Red Herring, Sunsphere, Self-Titled Debut, and the forthcoming Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been? He is an editor for Always Crashing and Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Washburn University.

Azaria Brown* is a writer from coastal Virginia. She writes about Black folk, for Black folk and currently attends the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she also teaches freshman English. Azaria writes magical realism and speculative stories about family and relationship dynamics, spirituality, religion, death, oblivion, and dance battles [sometimes]. She is the author of her debut chapbook The Smiths of 115th Street, forthcoming from WTAW Alcove Chapbooks.

Joanna Acevedo* is a writer, editor, and educator from New York City. She is the author of two books and two chapbooks. She received her MFA in Fiction from New York University in 2021, and also holds degrees from Bard College and The New School. Joanna’s chapbook Outtakes, was published by WTAW Alcove Chapbooks September 2023.

Liz Green* was raised in New Jersey. In 2024, she’ll receive a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her recent nonfiction was featured in The Woolf and The Opiate, and her chapbook The Haunt won the WTAW Alcove Chapbook Competition for 2024 and is forthcoming from WTAW Press. A psychotherapist, she lives in New Orleans.

Author of The River People (Lost Horse Press), The Expense of a View (UNT Press), and The Stolen Child and Other Stories (forthcoming from Betty Books), Polly Buckingham* is editor of Willow Springs magazine, series editor for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize, and teaches at Eastern Washington University.

Sara Burge is the author of Apocalypse Ranch (C & R Press, 2010), and her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Prairie Schooner, the minnesota review, CALYX Journal, Virginia Quarterly Review, Atticus Review, Louisville Review, River Styx, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor of Moon City Review.

John Hodgen is the Writer-in-Residence at Assumption University in Worcester, MA, and Advisory Editor for New Letters at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. Hodgen won the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry for Grace (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).  His fifth book, The Lord of Everywhere, is out from Lynx House/University of Washington Press, and his new book, What We May Be, is forthcoming also from Lynx House. He has won the Grolier Prize for Poetry, an Arvon Foundation Award, the Yankee Magazine Award for Poetry, the Bluestem Award, the Balcones Prize, the Foley Prize, the Chad Walsh Prize from Beloit Poetry Journal, the Collins Prize from Birmingham Poetry Review, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Award in Poetry.