Registration Begins for Eighth Annual OutWrite Conference
by Kevin Howell -- 2/1/99
On February 26-29, in Boston's Park Plaza Hotel, more than a thousand gay and lesbian writers, readers, booksellers, agents, critics, publicists, activists, performers, cartoonists, librarians, journalists, publishers, playwrights and artists will gather for a weekend of socializing, problem solving, skill building, film viewing, p try slams and cultural debate. It's the eighth annual OutWrite conference, subtitled this year: Our Culture, Our Writing, Our Lives. As the only national queer writers' conference, OutWrite brings published writers to their audience and introduces new writers. It provides professional development training for both the established and the emerging writer. Among the more than 100 workshops and panels are: A Hundred Years of Solitude Is Too Long: Latino/a LGBT Literature; Writing Ethnic Sex: Exploring the Erotics of Race; What Johnny and Janey Can't Read: Censorship in the Classroom; Whose Life Is It Anyway?: Biographical Literature; and Where Are the Warriors?: Transgender Literature Today. This year's keynote speakers are Pratibha Parmar and Mark Doty. Parmar is an award-winning London filmmaker (her Warrior Marks was a collaboration with Alice Walker). Her newest film, The Righteous Babes, is about feminism and rock music, featuring Ani Difranco, Sinead O'Connor and Gloria Steinem. Parmar also co-edited Queer Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Film and Video (Routledge). Mark Doty is an award-winning p t (My Alexandria (Univ of Illinois) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for P try for 1993) whose 1996 AIDS memoir, Heaven's Coast (HarperCollins), also won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The annual Audre Lorde Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Barbara Smith, cofounder and publisher of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. Her latest work is The Truth That Never Hurts: Collected Writings 1968-1998 (Rutgers Univ Press), represents 30 years' worth of her criticism and essays. Other presenters include Cecilia Tan, Tim Miller, Karla Jay, Samuel R. Delany, Jewelle Gomez, Craig Lucas, Sarah Schulman and Michael Bronski.Online registration is available at www.bsef.org/outwrite. Attendees can also contact Karen Bullock-Jordan, OutWrite conference director, at outwrite@bsef.terranet.com or call OutWrite at (617) 262-6969. Back To Bookselling---> |
