While this year’s AWP Conference in San Antonio is still technically happening, hundreds of attendees and dozens of exhibitors have decided to sit this one out thanks to the coronavirus.
Since AWP is a huge annual retail opportunity for presses and literary magazines, a vastly reduced turnout could make a major impact on their financial health.
Luckily, you can mitigate that impact without leaving the comfort of your own home. Here are four ways to support the independent and university literary institutions you love (and discover some new ones).
Browse the AWP Virtual Bookfair
Poet, critic, publisher, and literary agent Trevor Ketner invited presses to crowdsource a “virtual bookfair” in this public Google Doc, which is now more than 100 pages long. You’ll find new releases and flash sales from dozens of publishers.
Shop (and Submit to) Hub City Press
“We’re running a 15% off with code AWP at hubcity.org/books off our whole catalog,” says Kate McMullen, Assistant Director at Hub City Press in Spartanburg, South Carolina. “We would have been pushing Mark Barr’s Watershed and Megan Denton Ray’s Mustard, Milk, and Gin, our latest releases, and offering a sneak peak at early final copies of Carter Sickel’s The Prettiest Star. Plus, AWPs in the South are so few and far between, we’d be letting Southerners know that our open query period (for unagented manuscripts in fiction and nonfiction) runs now until April!”
Check Out Noemi Press’s New Releases
Another Southern publisher, Noemi Press (Blacksburg, Virginia) was planning on celebrating two new releases and discussing an ongoing series in a panel. Bonus: a buy-two, get-one-free sale.
- Upend by Claire Meuschke
- The Fish & The Dove by Mary-Kim Arnold
- The Akrilica Series, in partnership with Letras Latinas
See The Accomplices’s Spring Catalog
A partnership between Civil Coping Mechanisms, Entropy, and Writ Large Press, here’s a look at The Accomplices’s spring 2020 releases.
Southern Review of Books 