Submit Your 2025 Off-Site Event

Begin your off-site event submission now!

Off-site events are a popular and culturally vibrant addition to the AWP Conference & Bookfair. Each year AWP posts hundreds of off-site events taking place during the dates of our conference in the host city and online. These events are planned independently by AWP attendees and others in the host city. Off-site events are not curated or produced by AWP. We post these events as a courtesy to AWP attendees and to the local literary field.

Please carefully review the off-site event guidelines on this page before submitting your off-site event. Your submission must be reviewed by AWP before it can appear on the off-site events schedule. Please allow one week before making inquiries about your off-site event listing.

Visit the link above to submit your off-site event information. To avoid presenter conflicts, we recommend that you consult the conference schedule before planning your event.

If you have submitted an event, but would like to make changes, please email events@awpwriter.org. The deadline for submissions or request for changes is 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.

Off-site Event Guidelines & Reminders

Event Types
Most events are readings, panel discussions, or receptions, however, your event is not limited to one of those formats.

Venue Selection
One of the most important aspects of an off-site event is your venue selection. You can find a venue in each host city by searching for restaurants, bars, bookstores, libraries, universities, or other community spaces in the area and reaching out to them to plan your event. Please note that AWP cannot provide off-site venue recommendations.

Once you have a venue in mind, make sure it is accessible according to the Americans with Disabilities Act. Not all venue operators will know whether their location is fully accessible, so it’s important to ask them specific questions.

Please confirm the following with your venue contact before booking:

• Main entrances and bathroom entrances are wheelchair accessible.
• Bathrooms have an accessible stall. If the bathroom is a single room, there are handrails.
• No door is heavier than a five-pound pull.
• The venue will provide standard height chairs during the event.
• The venue can provide microphones and appropriate speakers/audio amplification.
• If the event takes place on an upper floor, the venue has an elevator.
• There are no barriers to accessibility from the entrance of the venue to the specific location of your event. Ask specifically about hallway width, small flights of stairs, or a steep incline.
• The venue does not use strobe lights.
• The venue welcomes service animals.

Please note: after the off-site events are posted, any event planned in a venue that is not accessible will be removed from the AWP website.

During the Event
Once you have determined the event venue is accessible, please make sure the event itself is accessible. Use microphones, reserve seating for those with mobility, visual, or hearing impairment, and provide copies of readings and remarks in black 14-16 point font on white paper.

Virtual Events
Virtual off-site events can also be submitted! If you are submitting a virtual off-site event, please note that you must confirm that captioning will be provided throughout the entire event. We also recommend the following best practices for virtual events:

• Introduce yourself and offer a brief physical description of yourself before you start speaking. Someone with low vision or who is blind may not be able to read your name on their screen.
• Mute yourself when you are not speaking to limit background noise.
• If you share your screen or show any visuals via Zoom, please make sure to verbally describe what you are showing.
• Avoid cross-talk or speaking over other attendees as much as possible and wait for the moderator to cue you to speak. Cross-talk is difficult to understand on video conferencing calls.
• Periodically verbally recap what is typed in the video call chat and share the content of that chat in an alternate way after the event.

If you are holding a virtual event on Zoom, we also recommend having interested attendees reach out to you directly for the Zoom link.