This weekend, I had the pleasure to attend (and present at) the John R. Milton Writer’s Conference at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. The reading went well, and I really enjoyed USD’s beautiful campus!

But let’s rewind: this whole adventure began last spring, when the conference organizers were soliciting presenters in our program. On a whim, I submitted a short story I wrote, as it dealt with two of the themes of the conference: gender and identity. At the beginning of the summer, much to my surprise, I learned that my submission was accepted! As a socially anxious person, there was some regret (I was going to have to socialize and read in front of people!), but ultimately, I was excited at the chance to present my work.

This was the first writer’s conference I’d ever been to, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. When we arrived that morning for my panel, I was so nervous, I couldn’t even eat the fruit or bagels the graduate school had graciously provided for us. The time for my panel finally came, and people began filtering into the room where it was taking place.

At most readings I’ve been to or taken part in, the reader stands up and reads alone at the front of the room. However, for our panel of fiction readings, we all sat at a table at the front of the room and read one-by-one from our seats. While this decreased the pressure on the reading, I felt supremely outmatched and out-of-place among my fellow readers. One was a PhD-holder and English professor at Chadron State College, another was a PhD candidate at USD, and the other was the director of USD’s writing center. It was incredibly difficult to convince myself that I belonged there among them, considering all three of them being almost twice my age or older (see: Imposter Syndrome).

My reading went smoothly, and afterwards, we took questions from the audience. Apparently, most creative panels (according to one of my fellow panelists) don’t usually garner many questions, if any. It was shocking, then, to have the only question from the audience directed at me. I’m thankful my brain was still functioning well enough to give a half-coherent answer that (hopefully) didn’t reveal how strange it felt to be giving advice to someone older than me.

With the weight of my presentation off my shoulders, I was able to go to and enjoy other panels (including another talented MSU MFA-er with whom I attended the conference). I found the topics of research diverse and intriguing—everything from asexuality in Shakespeare, to deconstructing genre conventions in Black Panther and Wonder Woman, to the “myth-stalgia” of the American frontier in Westworld. We also attended readings by the creative writing faculty of USD (which includes the poet-laureate of South Dakota!) and the featured writers, Erika Wurth and Brian Brodeur. This weekend was chock-full of intellectual and writerly engagement, and it reminded me why I love not only creative writing so much, but also critical thought and engagement with literature and culture.

So, I have some observations about my first writer’s conference after getting home and decompressing:

1. Just because you are young, it doesn’t mean you should be scared of presenting at this kind of event. There were undergraduates presenting and holding their own against tenured professors of literature.

2. This conference has reminded me of how much I want to get a PhD. I have all the research projects in mind now, but alas, no time to do them.

3. It’s so helpful to hear perspectives other than your own. Without hearing some of the panels at the conference, I never would have known Asexual Theory was now a critical lens for literature or that you can apply cryptid legends to your reading of Shakespeare.

4. There are a lot of fed-up females rising in the ranks of academia. I attended panels with presentations on why Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter reinforces the destructive myth of womanhood, how female oppression in The Handmaid’s Tale mirrors today’s society, and how women were stripped of their voice in Shakespeare. After the Shakespeare panel, we stayed and listened to three undergraduate women explain their passion for feminism and revealing systemic misogyny, including a goal of redefining the literary canon to include more women and people of color. It’s cliché to say, but it gives me hope to hear how young people are fighting for the female voice and a greater awareness of how patriarchal values shape our culture.

5. The literary community is awesome.

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