Since I last posted, I was in London for the Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference.
Okay, well, I wasn’t in-in London. I was supposed to be. But, y’know, COVID. . .
What’s great about attending a conference of like-mindeds is that you get to hear what your colleagues are thinking about when they present their papers. But you also get to talk to them afterwards in the hallways and pubs and book fairs. I have a friend who believes the real conference actually is in the hallways, and he rarely attends a panel, preferring to loiter the mingling spaces, using the presentation times to get coffee or drinks.
The Zoom conference model takes all of this away, which sucked because I really wanted to talk to some of the writers more about their work and my work and intersections and bifurcations. Still, writers talking about writing may be a highlight of my summer.
And there was one really cool aspect to this Zoom gig that wouldn’t have been at play if we’d all met in London. There was a true synchronous/asynchronous nature to the conference. Truly a global conference, the wonderful organizer, Graeme Harper, was inspired about the scheduling.
We had only two sessions of two hours each, and each presenter had only 15 minutes, considerably less time than one would have at a regular conference. The first session started Sunday, in the early afternoon on the east coast of the U.S., and late morning on the west coast. For the British and Europeans, it was early evening. And most of the presenters were from Britain and Europe. To my delight, we had a few folks from Asia for the first session, which meant they were in the wee hours of Monday.
As I listened, I sat in my 90-degree Fahrenheit, unair-conditioned office, sweating but enjoying every minute I heard about narrative grammar, psychogeography, historical insights, and the power of micro and nano fiction. After two hours, we broke for two hours.
I was due to present first at the second session.
I figured there wouldn’t be many folks to hear my presentation on subtext as a literary strategy because the Brits and Europeans would probably bow out after the first session, and I wasn’t wrong, many did.
But to my surprise and pleasure, there were an equal number of folks presenting and in attendance, waking up with morning coffee on Monday. Folks from Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Australia jumped in as participants and presenters. They wore scarves that looked awfully hot, but I realized they were in their winter.
I suddenly got nervous. I was glad to present first, and I think folks were interested in my topic. Mostly, I was excited to hear everyone else’s presentations, and they were cool.
One memorable one was from a writer in Hong Kong, who had proposed her topic on the solitude of writers in October, long before COVID hit here or there. Still, she’d been teaching remotely since November, not because of a virus but because of the protests taking place in Hong Kong, and, like me, she did not get to say goodbye to her students before the campus was shut. Like me, she instantly carved out a space for her students to write about their experiences of isolation.
What strikes me is how similar, people’s experiences continue to be not just in this pandemic, but politically, emotionally, psychologically. Hong Kong may have had protests first, then a pandemic, but the political issues didn’t go away, and neither has COVID. Our protests came afterwards. But none of our issues are magically going away either.
Today, I’m posting some pieces that highlight just how similar we are. I’d lay bets, you’ll find at least one point among these writers’s pieces that speak to your experiences, now, then, or later.
People of the world, stay safe. Be kind. Be strong.
–KLB
Hong Kong Protests (NOTE, THIS IS PRE-COVID 19; SEE HOW MANY FOLKS ARE WEARING MASKS ALREADY FOR HEALTH AND TO HIDE THEIR IDENTITIES.)
U.S. Protests in Oregon; Moms link arms to peacefully protect protesters who have been dragged off in violation of their civil rights by unidentified militia, who are later identified as federal border control and homeland security agents. (Extra kudos to all protesters who wore/wear masks.)