I'll try to edit my conference entries later, but here's the Reader's Digest version. This was an email to my teacher, so if you've come here from class, you might want to move on.

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David Halberstam's leadoff keynote was wonderful. Standouts as talk leaders were Jacqui Banaszynski, Cynthia Gorney, Thomas French, Lane DeGregory, and DeNeen Brown. They also were standout writer/readers as were Jay Allison, Adrian LeBlanc, Melissa Fay Greene, Charlie LeDuff, Patricia Williams, Hilton Als, Victor Merina, and others. A lot of what people read were disease and disaster pieces, but I have to admit there were many that made me want to cry, first, because of how sad the subject was, but also because of how beautiful the writing was. As far as talks go, there were so many good panels going on at the same time that I had to miss many I wanted to hear.

One interesting thing to me was how some of the really great writers, the "names," were poor session leaders. For the most part, it was those who taught somewhere, as well as who wrote, who made the best, most organized talk leaders. The trick to getting the most out of the conference, of course, was figuring out who those people were, and attending as many of their talks as possible.

Another interesting thing was hearing writer after writer express how hard it was for them to actually do the writing, and how many things they let come up to distract them. One writer, conference organizer Mark Kramer, said he does lots of field work because "it puts off the horror of writing." Other times, seasoned writers got up and asked questions that I have wondered about, myself, so that kind of reinforced that I'm moving along the right (write!) track.

Another observation: New Yorker writers are too precious by half, but they certainly can turn a phrase or two. Hilton Als read a brave, wonderful piece he'd written for a Jamaica Kincade book, but then later "taught" a workshop on writing fiction by simply reading more of his work. I walked out of that one. Susan Orlean, whose work was one of the main reasons I signed up in the first place, showed up nearly too late for her reading, then for her keynote session, the last of the conference, also mostly read from her work. I have to admit, though, that she did at least have a semblence of a speech preceeding that. At one point during her keynote, after reading piece after piece, she said she'd like to read another, then asked "Am I indulging myself?" Hmm ... well, yes, actually. It was good work, just not a keynote.

Charlie LeDuff, whose work I enjoy in the Times, was wildly disorganized, barely coherent, and seemed to be on drugs, though as an avowed supporter of Dubya and the Governator, I kind of doubt that he was. His talk went something like this: "jibba jabba, jibba jabba, *bam,* totally coherent, brilliant point, jibba jabba, blah, blah, fling arms about in wild gesticulations, run fingers through wildass hairdo, pound podium for effect, drool." Very weird, and pretty much a waste of time, but probably evidence of a wild, unfettered, creative mind.

Weirdness aside, I enjoyed the whole thing tremendously. Among others, I met reporters from New Zealand, Finnland, Spain, and Denmark, a woman who used to write for Down Beat magazine, a public television producer from NY City, a historian for NPR, and students who were required to attend the conference for a journalism class. I also got to see up close and first hand the built-in short attention span of writers for USA Today! And much of what was going on outside the sessions was almost as interesting as what was going on inside.

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© 2003 m. lucas