Cave Canem is excited to attend the 2025 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference & Bookfair in sunny Los Angeles, California, which will run from Wednesday, March 26th to Saturday, March 29th. If you are attending AWP 2025, say hi to our team of passionate staff, ambassadors, and volunteers at Booth #416.
Except for our annual offsite Fellows Reading, Off the Chain, attendees must be registered at AWP to attend in-person events.
Read an overview of our programs below. Click here for a comprehensive overview of programs featuring Cave Canem Fellows at AWP 2025.
Off the Chain with BillyWayne Coakley
Wednesday, March 26, 2025 at 6:30 PM PT
The Vineyard Room at the Davidson Continuing Education Center
Join us for our annual off-site Fellows Reading, Off the Chain. This year’s reading is hosted by BillyWayne Coakley (’07), and features readings by 13 Cave Canem Fellows presenting their work in rapid-fire intervals!
This event is presented in partnership with the USC Dornsife Department of English. In-person RSVPs are honored on a first-come-first-served basis.
boy maybe: A Signing with Cave Canem Fellow W.J. Lofton
Thursday, March 27, 2025 at 2:00 PM PT
AWP 2025, Los Angeles Convention Center, Booth #416
Join Cave Canem Fellow W.J. Lofton (’23) for a signing of their poetry collection, boy maybe.
About boy maybe
W. J. Lofton writes vivid, accessible poems that channel the energy, urgency, ambitions, joys, and sorrows of a young Black queer artist. They are about love and flirtation, sweet tea and hot sauce, God and family, life and death, police brutality and extrajudicial killings. His verses honor some of the young lives extinguished by these killings—Breonna Taylor, Kendrick Johnson, Ahmaud Arbery. He also pays tribute to some of the towering figures of Black culture who have come before him—Richard Pryor, Assata Shakur. His style is endlessly propulsive, informed by some of the Harlem Renaissance greats—Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks—but also transforming that rich tradition for the present day.
Available to AWP Registrants
Cave Canem Presents Magnitude and Bond: A Field Study on Black Literary Arts Organizations
Friday, March 28, 2025 at 1:45 PM PT
AWP 2025, Petree Hall C, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center
Cave Canem has been engaged in a study that explores the organizational needs, strategies, and models that enable Black literary organizations to thrive despite adverse socioeconomic conditions. The learning gained from the operations, programming, strategic planning, and leadership of such organizations is discussed in their historical and cultural context by literary powerhouses and leaders in literary arts administration. This panel, featuring Clint Smith, Meta DuEwa Jones, Mark McBride, Duriel E. Harris, and Lisa Willis, will benefit anyone seeking best practices from successful arts organizations with more than 140 years of collective experience.
Available to AWP Registrants
Quiet Fires: A Signing with Cave Canem Fellow andriniki mattis
Friday, March 28, 2025 at 2:00 PM PT
AWP 2025, Los Angeles Convention Center, Booth #416
Join Cave Canem Fellow andriniki mattis (’16) for a signing of his debut poetry collection, Quiet Fires.
About Quiet Fires
Quiet Fires, the debut poetry collection from andriniki mattis, queries the everpresent questions of Black lives. Be it in a bakery in Brixton, London, at a corner on Malcolm X Blvd, Brooklyn, or the pews of Notre Dame, Paris – whether crossing violent borders on land or in gender, we know how it is to be in a familiar place that feels foreign.
Available to AWP Registrants
What Water Knows: A Signing with Cave Canem Fellow Jacqueline Jones LaMon
Saturday, March 29, 2025 at 2:00 PM PT
AWP 2025, Los Angeles Convention Center, Booth #416
Join Cave Canem Fellow Jacqueline Jones LaMon (’00) for a signing of her third poetry collection, What Water Knows.
About What Water Knows
Jacqueline Jones LaMon delivers a stunning third collection that shows the elements of life that both unite us and create our greatest distances. What Water Knows transports the reader from drought to drowning, from the transatlantic Middle Passage to the breaking of water, from water wielded as a weapon to used as a reward. LaMon offers a labyrinth to understanding how we are all connected—through vibrant, searing images depicting the core of racism, betrayal, addiction, loss, climate change, and the ever-changing world in which we live.
Available to AWP Registrants