&Now 2019 Conference

Now that more women are publishing on experimental presses — and starting their own presses — the craft of experimental writing is becoming more diverse. In a world where difficult women are seldom cherished in the style of difficult men, how do we understand accessibility in experimental writing, where the prose often challenges the reader to the point of difficulty? Are women sometimes punished for difficulty and lack of accessibility in ways that their male counterparts are not?  How do accessibility and convergence coincide? Does accessibility or content have more urgency in a world of potential or essential convergence?  And if it’s more essential now than ever for women to tell their stories, where is the work most needed, and how will those most often sidelined be central to literary survival?

Female experimental authors at different stages of their careers, including professors and PhD students as well as emerging writers and writers with multiple books, discuss the changing aesthetics of experimental prose, craft, and gender diversity in publishing by exploring provocative subject matter as they follow in the footsteps of Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Djuna Barnes at a time when nontraditional publishers attempt to bring high-risk female literary works into the spotlight.