[Updated 3/23/22]

Our next book, Ways of Walking, won't quite be ready for the AWP conference in Philadelphia, but we'll be celebrating it anyway, with handouts, a preorder discount code, and a sample booklet. Look for us at the Blue Stoop table (T1108) in the Bookfair exhibit at the Convention Center.

In conjunction with Ways of Walking, and out of compassion for those who can't listen to fellow writers chatter for more than four hours at a time, we're hosting an afternoon of walks outside the convention center, guided by contributors to the book. These will take place on Friday, March 25, between 2:00 and 4:30 p.m. The walks will vary in length and destination, and we promise not to get you lost in the all-too-square layout of downtown Philly. It'll be fun!

The meetup site will be the Blue Stoop table at the Bookfair. The walks are also open to writers not at the conference; to join from outdoors, hang out at the NE corner of Arch St. and Broad St. by the time listed below for your walk. The walk leaders will stop by that corner to check for eager participants.

Here are the planned routes, durations, and starting times (but check in with us at the table for any late changes):

2:00: Market Street East and Independence Mall, 2 hours
2:00: Delaware Riverfront, 2 hours
2:30: Society Hill to Queen Village, 1 hour
3:00: Italian Market, 1 hour
3:30: Rittenhouse Square, 1 hour
4:00: Eraserhood/Ridge Avenue (1/2 hour)

(The originally planned 3:30 walk to Logan Circle has been canceled because of a family emergency.)

​We hope to see a lot of people we know and meet a lot of new writers.

The first two advance reviews have arrived for Ways of Walking:

​“Walking’s pleasures are infinite, and those in Ways of Walking hardly less so. Editor Ann de Forest has assembled an eloquent team of rambling writers who offer readers intriguing discoveries at every turn of the page. The twenty-six essays assembled here contain fresh takes on city streets and foggy mountaintops, haunting riversides and dicey edgelands. Often, the celebrated wonders of walking stand aside to let danger, disability, and discouragement have their say, too. One high point is a self-doubting pilgrimage through library vaults to commune with the climate-controlled notebooks of Henry David Thoreau. In 1851 Thoreau advised himself, ‘Probe the universe in a myriad points.’ That could be the epigraph for this rewarding volume. Whether you take your steps in ten-league boots or bedroom slippers, you will find insight and inspiration a-plenty in these stimulating pages.”
--William Sharpe, Barnard College, author of The Art of Walking: A History in 100 Images (Yale University Press, forthcoming)

“This rich, readerly collection of essays on the multiple possibilities open to us as members of a species constitutively shaped by its ability to walk on two feet is, simply, inspiring. Its writers vividly record the travails and the triumphs of their travels on foot, in ways that force us to reconceptualise our relationship both to the environments we inhabit and to one another. The book is a moving, endlessly stimulating invitation to walk, to think, and to rethink walking.”
--Matthew Beaumont, author of The Walker: On Finding and Losing Yourself in the Modern City

The book will be published in May. To request an advance review copy, use the Contact page.