Bbs first AWP!

Low Expectations to Great Expectations

Low Expectations

Months ago, I decided to attend AWP because (1) it was local to me in LA and (2) it gave me perfect deadline to have 10,000 words done for my memoir so I could pitch it to agents I knew would be there. But…

I realized two days too late that I needed to apply to see an agent by submitting a beforehand, and the deadline passed. Naive little me thought there would be some room where people could just go and pitch agents! I was disappointed in myself for not checking, embarrassed I thought I could walk on in with my idea, and sad that I was missing a family reunion to attend a conference where I couldn’t even pitch to an agent. Was it even worth attending?

Needless to say, I went into AWP with low expectations. The sessions looked interesting, but I wondered how useful they’d be—mostly I was riding the wave of being annoyed with myself and accepting this fate.

I should add that I’ve never attended a writing conference. I’ve only attended professional conferences for libraries and speech-language pathology, which were more exhausting than they were educational IMO. But I always enjoyed meeting up with people and making connections—so while I set my bar low, I hoped for the best.

DAY ONE

After a long week, and knowing I need to pace myself for a conference, I showed up to attend one panel and Roxane Gay’s keynote address for the first day.

I held back tears as I attended the first panel, “Beyond Tiger Moms & Model Minorities: Imagining the Asian American Family” with Kirstin Chen, Jimin Han, Grace Loh Prasad, Matt Salesses, and Kim Liao.

I didn’t cry just because they talked about writing beyond Asian American stereotypes, though it was a incredibly enlightening, but it’s because I was in a room full of writers who were talking about writing! And I was a writer writing a memoir! It felt like I arrived to a place I was meant to be.

Sure, a convention center wouldn’t be my first choice, but even that didn’t mute my emotional connection. In fact, I’m impressed I could feel the connection in such a cold environment!

Not only was I inspired, but I felt like I belonged.

I often tell my clients about how in The Politics of Trauma, Staci K. Haines shares how safety, dignity, and belonging are our human needs. There have been times where I struggled with belonging, especially related to what “home” means. But to feel this level of belonging made me realize how much I’d been missing! This filled me with so much joy and vigor about living a writing life (followed by utter confusion about what it means for me to live a writing life 😅).

Roxane Gay offered a beautiful keynote sharing how hard it can be to write during these times and why it is essential. She explicitly supported Palestinian peoples, offered funny anecdotes about how much she hated her first AWP, and closed with how this current administration is silencing so many because “They know what we know. The pen is not mightier than the sword. The pen is the sword.” Oof, that last line induces tears once again!

I was so into what Roxane was saying, that I forgot to take a pic until she walked off the stage!

Day one set the bar much higher for the rest of the conference.

DAY TWO

For day 2, I chose sessions that were more about the publishing and learning process. I attended “Leaving the Writing Cafe: When, Why & How to Pursue Representation.” The big takeaway is that agents need to sell books, and even if they LOVE your book but they don’t think it has selling power, they might have to pass. While this is something I’ve heard before, I think it’s so important to remember because writers fall in love with what they want to share so much, that it’s easy to forget it needs to sell if you want to publish traditionally. This means you have to think about who you’re selling to and what they want.

This is such a struggle for writers because it brings about a tension between creativity and traditional notions of success. We live in capitalism, and this is the game we play. It’s not unfamiliar to me because I have a business I am incredibly passionate about, AND I have to think about what my people want, what resonates with my style of working, and also makes money so I can make a living!

I was so excited to learn that two writers who have attended my workshops were on the SAME panel, and they didn’t even know each other before the panel came together! The panel was called “Alchemizing Belonging Outside of Academia: Writers Creating Careers Without MFAs” and the two panelists I knew were Heidi Lepe and Camari Carter Hawkins. As someone who doesn’t have an MFA, I think it’s incredibly important to cultivate intentional writing community because this is what MFA programs provide. Thanks to Heidi for shouting out my writing accountability group that meets twice a month for an hour to get our writing things done! Since I’m curating my own writing retreat in less than two weeks, I’ll probably have more times, so feel free to sign up to hear about it.

After this, I attended the Asian American Caucus so I could meet people. It was hosted by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Kaya Press, and Kundiman. Aside from yummy snacks, I met a Desi writer extricating herself from a toxic relationship, and we had a conversation for a couple hours afterward! It is these one-on-one connections that light me up. When I meet another South Asian woman who is leaving a toxic situation, I feel like I found a treasure that has been buried by patriarchy. What a miracle it is to say, “I found this! They can’t stop us!”

Around this time, the idea of getting an MFA got planted into my brain. My new friend told me about the low-residency program she enrolled, and then I met someone at a post-AWP event for Asian Americans at the Friday Gallery who attended another program. I came into the conference with zero intention of getting an MFA because I’m over 40 and don’t want to go back to school, accrue more debt, and I feel like I have ways to cultivate community. But you can’t deny that an academic program makes it less work to have to do it all yourself.

After this first event, I attended a reading hosted by my friend

Margeaux Feldman

and Arianne Ayu Alizio called Unruly Bodies where several writers talked about living in bodies that don’t act “as they should”. From this reading, I realized how important it is for me to connect to how a writer reads their work. Writing can be so beautiful, but if I don’t connect to the auditory performance, I can disengage. I don’t really like this because I don’t want to discredit the work, but I have found it challenging when it comes to anyone who presents anything. I had to leave a bit early since I was getting exhausted, but I deeply appreciated the vulnerability of these beautiful writers to share the ways their bodies move in this world and how they are just as important as anyone else’s, even if they are denied their existence at times.

On the drive home, I really wondered if I had it in me to attend Day Three, especially because I wanted to attend a 9am panel and omg, I got home at 11pm and this bb is usually in bed by 9:30pm lol.

I realized that I didn’t have to make any decision until the morning. I got home, started googling MFA programs cuz why not? Then I passed out, only to have dreams of missing the 9am panel 🤣 Does this happen to you too?

DAY THREE

I woke around 6:45am excited about day three! I was shocked by my level of excitement given how tired I was the previous evening, but I eagerly channeled this energy into a brand new day to learn and connect.

Before I entered the convention center, I got a breakfast sandwich at a nearby coffee shop. I wore my keffiyeh over my sweater, and an older South Asian couple entered the shop to get their coffee. As I exited, they told me they loved my keffiyeh, and invited me to their table at the book fair. Turns out they run a small press focused on South Asian authors, AND the husband’s first name was very similar to my best friend’s name, AND they are both librarians at the San Francisco Public Library! This was so delightful for so many spots in my heart. The sychronicities were wild…but you won’t believe what happens later in the day!

The 9am session was moderated by Namrata Poddar, who I’ve been following on social media for some time, and it was titled “Can Writers ‘Live the Dream’?: On Paying the Bills While Doing What You Love.” Obviously it was well attended because this is a very hot topic. What I learned from this session is that while some huge writers can “make it” only on the books they publish, that is not most writers. The fact is, many people either get MFAs or PhDs in Creative Writing to teach writing, they have other jobs, or they do random side gigs.

One of my gifts, and challenges, is that I run a business I am so passionate about while also wanting to write. Because I’m not getting a paycheck from a company, there’s some more stress on building the business, especially as I continue to cement its foundation. I know I’m getting there, but it takes time. This is why I want to create an ecosystem between my business and writing life so they feed each other. Many of my clients are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color, and they are also creative souls: writers, artists, producers, teachers, busines owners, ecosystem weavers, and more. So while I have a healing business, it’s also a creative business. This is why I ended up naming my LLC “Nisha Creative” because I deeply knew that healing itself is an act of creation, and creativity facilitates healing as well. So if this resonates for you, and you want to connect about how you can heal so you can live a creative life that doesn’t make you feel like you can enjoy it, let’s chat!

This panel still had me wondering if an MFA was for me, which led me to the bookfair where there were several small presses, MFA programs, and others vendors waiting to give free candy and information! The bookfair was SO overwhelming, so I just tried to go to spots that I felt drawn to. I stopped by the Antioch MFA program’s table, which is a low-residency program around the corner from my home. The students and faculty were incredibly enthusiastic. They definitely sold me on the idea, but we will see about the execution. Ultimately, an MFA is on my mind, and as Neptune entered Aries this past weekend in my 9th house of higher education and learning, I can see that while a seed has been planted, it might take some time to grow and evolve. I can write whether or not I have an MFA, and go from there (or so I tell myself lol).

At one point during the bookfair I turned around and saw….a friend Andrea, who I went to high school with over 25 years ago! The Andrea I remember was wild about Interview with the Vampire and all things goth. I’d been following her on social media, so it felt so surreal to look at her and ask myself, “wait, is she real or is this Instagram?” We gave each other a huge hug, and she told me she was roominig with one of her besties, Samira, from high school who I also knew! I said I’d stop by before their next session before it started to say hi to both of them. (Trust me, the story gets better!)

I went to the booth of the South Asian couple who enthusiastically gave me a free book, and I realized I would be late for my next session so I couldn’t meet Samira. I decided to go to my session, but leave a few minutes early so I could catch her at the end of the session.

The session I attended was a bit emotional for me. It was called "The Cost of Assimilation: Asian Diaspora Writers on Losing Their First Language.” This hits incredibly close to home as my parents did not teach me my primary native language Gujurati. The panelists read excerpts from their books, and shared about the different ways they were translators or needed translation, as well as how they expressed their native language in writing. It made me think about how language is an incredible connector, and I’m grateful to have learned some more Gujurati before my last trip to India. While it wasn’t fluent, it did help me connect with some family members, even through listening to casual conversation. It’s amazing how something so simple can make a difference. This inspires me to write about my own experience with losing my language because if I write about it, maybe it won’t feel as lost.

I left a few minutes early to meet my other friend from

A Little Something from Samira

, but she was running late. This is where the magic happened! I hadn’t planned to attend a session during the next slot, but I walked with Andrea to the next session she was planning to attend with Samira. I asked what it was about, and she said “Experiments in Time” where writers talk about how they incorporate how time isn’t so linear into their work. This topic is intriguing af to me because there was a time I wondered if I should integrate the concept of time into my memoir. Plus, Elissa Washuta, who wrote White Magic, was goign to be on the panel!

I decided to attend, gave Samira a massive hug, and it felt like an experiment in time all on its own. To hear about how we experience and write about time while sitting next to two people I hadn’t seen since way before the iPhone came out, watching us grab our phones when we used to pass notes, felt surreal. On top of it all, halfway through the session, I heard Samira rip a piece of paper out of her notebook, watched her fold it up, and smiled as she handed it to me just like the old days when my generation passed notes during class and passing periods 😭 Do kids these days still do that?

It truly was all a time warp in the most beautiful way. I never would have imagined bumping into old friends who I had lost touch with at this conference. The panel itself was fascinating, and I loved the energy of the author Shze-Hui Tjoa. She wrote a memoir called The Story Game that uses time and space as part of the story as she recovers memories lost due to CPTSD—I’m really looking forward to reading it.

Three high school friends reunited after more than 25 years! From left to right: Nisha, Samira, and Andrea

After this, I connected with a new friend I made a few months before, and we both went to the last panel of the conference called “Stories of Mental Health from the Margins” with all South Asian women authors. One was Prachi Gupta who wrote an indelibe memoir called They Called Us Exceptional. Nina Sharma was also on the panel, she wrote a book of essays called The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown, which I have just ordered. Lastly, Nayantara Roy, author of The Magnificent Ruins, was also on the panel. It felt so important to learn their own stories and hear their narratives about mental health, colonialism, and racism. I wrote in my notes that one way to define mental health is that “it’s a family secret”. This hit me in the gut. Prachi also talked about how, given the model minority trope, the idea of being well means that you’re “successful” when in actuality, it’s often the opposite. We just never talk about it.

Great Expectations

As I walked out of AWP, I felt my emotions trigger and tears welled up in my eyes once again. I had never been to such a large gathering and felt so inspired, moved, and connected all at once, with such serendipty as well! Yes it was exhausting, and yes it was overwhelming, and yes I did not want to be convinced to get another graduate degree—but it was truly worth it. I had completely forgotten about the agents I wanted to talk to because the creation and community was actually the medicine I needed.

I left ready to wield my sword in the kind of urgency that demands I hone my craft so it can be used well.

While I don’t want to pressure myself to have any specific outcome, I am framing my great expectations to be about immersing myself in writing rather than being obsessed with the outcome of it.

It is the process that shapes us and is expressed into the world.

If I want to be an embodiment of my own self-expression, it’s time I started practicing more of it.