Bathroom bagels should not be a thing.

And we have the power to stop them.

AWP is the largest writing conference in North America and it can be a very lonely place. Writers come from all over to reunite with their writing peeps - their MFA buddies, their publisher friends, their lit mag compadres, and so on.

If your writing friends are not there

you will be alone, but worse than alone, you will be alone and surrounded by groups of people guffawing with shared laughter and hugging each other tightly with genuine affection.

I’ve been twice.

The first time Dave came with me, partially to see Portland and partially to hang out during my free time because I knew next to no one. The second time, Lara and many of my other writing friends were there, and I was one of the guilty guffawers running from lunch to coffee to readings. It was great.

This year,

with the exception of my creative non-fiction mentor Sarah, most of my writing friends will not be there, but I was planning to go anyway to support the Jewish themed panels. They were hard-won. There was a pro-you-know-who outburst at the book fair last year, which caused many writers to eat their bagels in the bathroom, cowering in fear or despair or just exhaustion. Apart from all the reasons why this is painfully gross, I also find it profoundly sad.

I wrote a complaint letter. No one answered.

To get the Jewish panels going I believe there was some extensive negotiation, some lobbying, some heated conversation.

So the last thing I was going to do this year

was avoid AWP. By most metrics, I had no business there - no agents, publishers or lit mags to meet with. No MFA buddies, Undergrad friends, residency pals. My book comes out two days after I get home, so the timing is a little hectic.

But there was no way I was going to pass up an opportunity to support.

With only four weeks to go,

someone on one of Sarah’s panels (about antisemitism in the writing community) bowed out and she invited me to sub in.

I couldn’t be happier.

Well, I guess I could be, if I had been invited to talk about something like Research in Creative Non Fiction or Family Stories or Hermit Crab Essays instead of post-Oct 7- antisemitism. The topic is heart wrenching, difficult and emotional. But if antisemitism has to exist, then I believe we, as writers, have an obligation to shine a light on it, and in that context, I am honoured to be included.

Persistence-wise, Let’s imagine that

I had decided not to go to AWP this year. Then, when the panelist dropped out, and Sarah needed a filler, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. Let’s imagine that I didn’t keep in touch with Sarah after going to her pre-conference collage essay workshop at Hippocamp in 2015. Then, when the panelist dropped out, Sarah wouldn't have thought of me as a viable option. We can imagine that I had never submitted any of my work for publication, so when Sarah pitched me to the other panelists, and they looked me up, I had nothing to show. Or that I was not vocal about my community, so the panelists were concerned that I wouldn’t represent.

And, Persistence-wise, Let’s imagine that

my friends weren’t going and I was afraid of having no one to chill with. Or, let’s say all Jewish writers decided that AWP would be too scary and so instead of standing up and being counted. Instead of writing letters and lobbying, we just wanted to sit in the comfort of our respective couches and Facebook each other about how unfair the whole thing was.

And let’s imagine that because of our inaction, injustice was allowed to continue. And grow. Until anyone who was publicly bullied had no one to stand up for them, and they too, had to eat their bagel sandwiches in the bathroom.

The bathroom would get awfully crowded and

we can not let that happen.

True, I might feel lonely at AWP this year.

But I will have the satisfaction of knowing that we have created a safe space for Jewish writers so that no one has to eat their bagel in the bathroom out of fear that a mob with megaphones will blast them out of the book fair.

Please remember.

When we are standing up for unfairness, we do it for ourselves, but we also do it for every bathroom bagel eating person in line behind us. Please use your voice.

Photo by Patrick Langwallner on Unsplash