Belonging in the Unbelonging
My first writer's conference
I'd never attended a writer's conference before and I was anxious about it. Still I went to WCONA 2025 (The Writers Conference of Northern Appalachia).
I've been...pursuing? practicing?...creative writing for a couple of years now, with some "success” (in terms of getting a handful of stories published at least). Still, rejection is far more common than acceptance, and it's hard to avoid taking that personally.
I've always felt, to one degree or another, like a misfit, with a toe in too many worlds to find actual footing in any of them. It's like Matthew Arnold writing about "wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born." I mean, look at what I just did there, quoting Matthew Arnold without scorn or irony.
I trace much of my angst to my experiences in academia. To be clear, I never had an awful time in my profession -- like regrets, I've had a few but then again too few to mention. My grad school was nurturing and supportive for the most part, and I've settled into a good teaching job at a small, liberal arts college that's just right for me.
No, it was always the broader culture of academia that has bothered me, and from which I've tried to stay and arms-length away. It's hard to say exactly what it is. There's certainly the matter of all the cultural capital that was definitely not in my privilege backpack after my upbringing. But to be honest, I think the reason I occupy such an insider/outsider position in the academy is probably the same reason I still stand in a marginal spot in the church of my raising. It goes back to Arnold; I'm always between two worlds (more than two, actually). Liminality is my disposition (my therapist wants me to start believing this makes me a "unicorn," not a "misfit," but I remain unsure).
I am a dilletante, a bee constantly jumping across a field of flowers. This doesn't sit any better with academia (which demands specialization and expertise) than it does with the church (which runs on dogma like America and I run on Dunkin').
While I relish the freedom my dilettantism affords me, it does frankly become a grind trying to fit in at social events where only part of your person is appreciated. This is my experience with academia and it was the source of my agita attending WCONA 2025. (There's also surely something about claiming the title "writer" for myself, now that I think of it, but that feels like a distraction from the present subject).
Please forgive the lengthy preamble, but I hope it sets up the happy surprise I felt when I arrived at WCONA last weekend. It was wonderful, to be clear. And though I'll likely always be a misfit, at this conference, I was at least visiting the Island of Misfit Toys.
The people I met, the other writers, were kind and enthusiastic, interesting and interested. I feared falling into a sea of posturing and ankle-grabbing, but I'm happy to say this was not the case. There were laughs, insightful conversations and many revelations of common connections and interests, persistent reminders that we share a small world.
The creative readings were beautiful, funny, moving, and thrilling. The panels I attended were fascinating, informative, and inspiring, and I returned home with a notebook bursting with new ideas.
And yes, there was of course networking. But even this felt more like connection-making and community-building. One writer I met, Andrew Akers, is also a forest ranger in addition to being a wonderful writer. I hope to interview him on this publication's "Five Questions for Interesting People," the occasional interview series that needs to be less occasional. I wish, in fact, that I'd thought to recruit several more writers for that series...next year. Next year.
But there was also something thematic that I wanted to reflect on here. The realization was clear and striking and a bright light came on inside me at the conference. It has to do with being a misfit (or unicorn or whatever).
The very nature of this conference (not as a gathering, but as an idea and an organization) reflects my own discomfort with myself as a person who seemingly belongs nowhere.
The Writers Conference of Northern Appalachia is a phrase that in and of itself is full of disjuncture and paradoxes with incredible creative potential.
"Northern" and "Appalachia" cannot coexist without creating some degree of cognitive tension. Come to that, so do the words "Writers" and "Conference," which implies a collection of notoriously solitary individuals.
It occurs to me that the whole endeavor gives shape to a geographic and literary indefinability. Industrial and rural crash together here, as do the sophisticated and the simple. This was a theme that repeatedly came up during panels and also in the incredible keynote address by Sarah Elaine Smith (available here).
These humming tensions resonate with me, and they gave me a little faith in my own contradictions.
And it all gave me the warm feeling of (dare I say?) belonging.
It sounds like an interesting event where so many things clash. But a common goal can bring people together which can be very rewarding. Great post.
Thank you for such a lovely post. It really echoes what I felt at my first writers conference, which was also by WCoNA, in 2019—their first. As a fellow writer, I welcome you and am so glad you felt this way; and as staff I’m filled with the warm feeling that “we’re doing it right.” Still. We hope to always.