[This past week,
after many
years of planning and many
posts in this space, I helped host the 2016 Northeast MLA
convention in Hartford. It was an amazing four days, and I could write much
more than a week of recap posts—so here I’ll focus specifically on the new
initiatives I brought to the convention. If you were part of NeMLA 2016 in any
way, please share your own recaps and responses in comments!]
On takeaways
from three impressive creative writers featured at the conference.
1)
Our opening night creative reader, Monique Truong, is one of the most
acclaimed novelists of the last couple decades, and it showed in her
mesmerizing presentation. She linked her two novels, The
Book of Salt (2003) and Bitter
in the Mouth (2010), to two autobiographical essays to consider themes
of food and hunger, memory and identity. I was particularly struck in Monique’s
presentation by the way that a great writer can use words to both captivate and
challenge, to comfort and discombobulate, often at one and the same time. I can’t
imagine a better writer and voice to have kicked off our 2016 conference.
2)
Just before the membership brunch that concludes
the conference, we featured another extremely talented contemporary writer, Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel.
Melissa is a Mohegan and her Native American heritage and community inform
every book and work of hers; but she is also a master of multiple fictional
genres, from young adult lit to mysteries and thrillers. Her reading from her
newest book, Wabanki Blues
(2015), demonstrated how much she’s continuing to work with and combine
these different genres and themes, producing a writer who is unique and vital
and one whom I was very happy to feature at the conference.
3)
In between those opening and closing creative
readings, we featured a number of other writers: acclaime novelist Carole Maso at our debut Meet the Author event;
a number of NeMLA creative writers at our
innovative Flash Readings; and more. I was unfortunately otherwise occupied
with President-ing during most of those readings, and likewise was unable to
attend the Friday reading by one other creative writer I invited: Leanne Hinkle, who has published
under the names Leanne Tyler and Lexi Witcher. But since Leanne
was kind enough to take part in our Thursday public school visits, I had the
chance to spend a good deal of time with her—and found her to be thoroughly
collegial and friendly, ready to share her writing and her voice with both
students and NeMLA attendees. Another great addition to a particularly creative
conference!
Next recap
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Thoughts on
this post? Other NeMLA follow ups you’d share? I’d really love to hear them
(and feel free to email them to me
if you prefer)!
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