May/Summer 1995 
The Keynote Address of the 1995 AWP Annual Conference at Pittsburgh: Democracy, the Arts, & National Service
Jane Alexander
I have had a love affair all of my life with words, and so I feel a special kinship with all of you who have made the word your life. I am delighted to be here at the AWP conference, the largest literary gathering, and I want to thank Mark Johnson, Executive Director of AWP, not only for inviting me to speak, but also for his leadership of the AWP, which has tripled in budget under his tenure.
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New Organization Serves Adjuncts in Academe Nationwide
Hannah Hadas
The National Adjunct Faculty Guild (NAFG) is the first national professional association for the nation's 350,000–400,000 adjunct, part-time, and full-time temporary college faculty. The Guild, founded in February of 1993, provides members with a variety of programs, services, academic discounts and benefits, including access to health and dental care coverage and professional development funding. In addition, together with the TIAA-CREF and Fidelity Investments, Inc., the Guild offers members customized retirement planning services.
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The Partnership between Authors & Publishers
Robert McDowell
I could tell you the story of Story Line Press, how it grew out of a literary magazine called The Reaper, how it was sustained, especially in its early years, by support from the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York; how it began as a publisher of two volumes of poetry a year, one by a newcomer, and one by an established writer; I could tell you how the press expanded to include collections of short stories, novels, verse plays, criticism, translation, and memoir.
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Two Writers under the Same Roof—
Marian Blue
Surviving years of sniping from Christian political activists, politicians, conservative think tanks, pundits, talk radio hosts—the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has become an enduring topic for political debate. Donald Hall is the author of thirteen books of poetry including The One Day (1988), Old and New Poems (1990), and The Museum of Clear Ideas (1993), as well as numerous books of short stories, biography, and essays, including his recent memoir, Life Work (1993).
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Disappearing Authors & Disappearing Readers: Myth & the Internet Community
W. Scott Olsen
It is any morning in my office. I walk in, fire up the coffee and then the computer. I log onto a Unix computer and discover that mail is waiting for me. Some of it is from San Antonio, Texas. Some of it is from Norfolk, Virginia or from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan—or England or Denmark or New Zealand or Australia. Some of the mail is solely for me, while the rest is addressed to a group of about two hundred and fifty "listmembers" of which I'm a part. All of it is technologically exotic.
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Singing (& Listening) for the Record
Patricia Goedicke
The best cartoons take wickedly deconstructive aims at the vanity of our most cherished dreams about ourselves. Take that unforgettable New Yorker cartoon about the disheveled young husband at his computer. His wife is peering around the corner with a cup of coffee in her hand, and he's saying triumphantly over his shoulder, "I've found my voice, Penny. It's deep, wise, and compassionate."
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On the Founding of WC&F: Community for Writers
Kelleen Zubick
Every writer can benefit from a literary model, even Dante who followed Virgil down the smoldering paths among the inmates of hell. For better or worse, it's stimulating to meet our models in the flesh. It's wonderful if they live up to expectations and continue to be a source of inspiration; it's disappointing but still useful to discover tyrants, jerks, or the just plain fallible and human—in which case one may learn to break free of them and establish one's own style and voice.
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