By Bill Nevins

John Crawford will be in a celebratory mood in early April when he brings a delegation of authors from Albuquerque’s West End Press to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) national conference being held in Denver from April 7 to 10, 2010.

Michael Chabon

He has just grounds to feel that way. Crawford’s 35-year-old independent Albuquerque publishing company and its roster of poets, fiction writers, dramatists and essayists could turn even the largest of east and west coast publishers green with envy. Author gatherings like the AWP’s – which meets in a different American city every year – inspire and facilitate lasting achievement among “alternative” publishers like West End Press.

Luminaries at the conference

AWP 2010 will feature keynote speaker Michael Chabon , the best selling fiction writer and essayist whose works inspired Michael Douglas’ hit film Wonder Boys and Nick Nolte’s movie Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Film-savvy literary veteran Chabon is sure to draw keen interest from New Mexican writers, given our state’s plunge into the movie industry.

Other literary luminaries reading their works at AWP will be Sapphire (the poet whose novel Push became the hit movie Precious), Sandra Cisneros, Rita Dove, Patricia Smith, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gary Snyder, Anne Waldman, creative writing guru Brian Kiteley and dozens more. Denver will rock into the wee hours each night with specially organized poetry and fiction readings and literary parties in restaurants and pubs outside the Conference itself. Inside the Hyatt Regency and the Colorado Convention Center more than 500 publishers and journalists will display their wares and talk shop with authors seeking to break into print.

John Crawford says, “We will attend the AWP, have a book table, bring some authors. The AWP should be quite a blow-out this year. We hope to see plenty of our fine New Mexico writers there.”

Getting there

AWP 2009 Conference

Although Crawford did not set out specifically to become a “feminist publisher,” his company took an early turn in that direction when he attended a 1976 book conference in Minneapolis to meet author Meridel Le Sueur, who was hailed as one of the most important feminist writers of the 20th century.

“I made this epic trek in winter,” Crawford recalls. “Le Sueur was being lauded by feminists of all stripes, but she seemed to like me showing up. I remember she had a salty, hyperbolic sense of humor and we got along fine. In fact, we schemed and planned, and I started publishing her books.”

West End Press first published two Le Sueur story collections, Harvest and Song for My Time (later combined into Harvest Song). In 1978 West End Press released her novel, The Girl, which has been taught in at least 600 courses across the country.

In 1982, six years after meeting Le Sueur, Crawford met playwright, critic and poet Cherrie Moraga, also at the Minneapolis Book Festival. West End Press went on to publish Moraga’s plays Giving Up the Ghost and Heroes and Saints. Other notable works by women West End has published include Ana Castillo’s My Father was a Toltec, Dineh poets Laura Tohe and Lucy Tapahonso and Sharon Doubiago’s ground-breaking epic poem Hard Country.

“West End Press was my first publisher, maybe my most important publisher,” Doubiago declared by email from San Francisco.

West End writers

Crawford has given literary birth to many now-famous writers and, like a proud parent, reminds us of West End’s accomplishments. But his joy is bittersweet, tempered by a deep sense of loss, shared by New Mexico’s literary community with the recent passing of beloved poet Maisha Baton.

“West End Press produced ten books over the last year – a record for us,” Crawford says. “Particularly meaningful to me was the ‘new series’ with six first-time or underpublished poets – Marianne Broyles, Jason Yurcic, Jeanetta Mish, Jenifer Vernon, Sy Hoahwah and Maisha Baton (who died of cancer a month after publication). The writers made it worthwhile, while the sorrow over Maisha’s death was difficult to bear.”

Crawford cites feminist publishers, scholars, and writers who provided inspiration along the way  including Adrienne Rich, Carolyn Forché, and his close friends Linda Hogan and Joy Harjo, the poet, recording artist and former UNM creative writing professor who will be a featured speaker at AWP 2010.

Quick graduate course

UNM’s director of creative writing, Julie Shigekuni, author of the novel Unending Nora, is among the Albuquerque literati enthusiastically looking forward to AWP 2010. Zachary Kluckman, organizer of the Albuquerque Slam Poet Laureate competition and the Poetry Tangents workshops, says he’s been to previous AWP Conferences in Chicago and the east coast. “I wouldn’t miss it for all the haikus in Japan, to coin a phrase. It is four solid days and nights of poetry and meeting authors – you don’t get much sleep but you learn more than in many grad courses, and you meet just wonderful people.”

Anne Le, conference assistant for AWP, says that AWP is thrilled to be convening in the Southwest this year. “I think it really is wonderful that the conference is able to move around the states each year, to focus on a specific region and the poets and writers that come out of there.”

For a catalog of West End Press books go here .

Denver Conference schedule and registration information available at:

Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

–Bill Nevins is a contributing editor for albuquerqueARTS.