A Seminar Named Desire

 

January 9, 2022

A Seminar Named Desire

The 39^th annual Key West Literary Seminar was back this year after a one-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic which caused the cancellation of last year’s seminar as well as a host of other changes that had to be applied to this year’s version. Though the topic remained the same and was simply pushed forward to this year, basically every other aspect was changed and created a chaotic mad scramble to produce a basically all-new version of the event this year.

The biggest and most obvious change was the change of location from the confines of our long-time home at the San Carlos Institute on Duval Street to an all-outdoor location at the Coffee Butler Amphitheatre which was not really designed for the intimate event that we usually provide for under 400 people to the more massive location with a capacity in the thousands and lots and lots of room.

It called for a re-invention of the entire event, done mostly on the fly with all sorts of new challenges for the staff. Large tents were brought in to offer protection from the sun and possible rain and the frenzy of cancelations, especially among the scheduled authors led to a manic time that our staff and volunteers had to scramble to keep up with. 

The venue took a ton of work to transform into the type of location we needed and the schedule itself was changing even as the seminar was underway. Once again, this year, I served as volunteer coordinator, and it was a challenge as many of the regular crew begged off due to covid and others had to change or cancel at the last minute as they actually were coming down with the rampant Omicron variant right up to the day they were scheduled to work.

The threat of covid exposure keep a lot of the regular board members who pick up the writers at the airport and deliver them to their hotels led Kathy and I to keep busy running back and forth to the airport to pick-up arriving writers. Among the writers we picked up were Joyce Maynard, Jamie Quatro, Jericho Brown, Eileen Myles,Zac Salih, DeeSha Philyaw, Tom Perrotta, Jami Attenberg and our Keynote speaker, Lauren Groff.

It was a lot, but it is enjoyable as it gave us a chance to meet and greet the writers before things got too hectic and they are all such interesting people, any chance to spend some time with just them is pretty cool. In addition to the writers, getting to hang out and be social with so many friends, volunteers, staff and board members is always something we look forward to so much.

While some friends were not able to attend this year due to covid concerns (We missed you Doug), many others were on hand as usual and for many it is the only time of the year that we get to see them.  It is really a magical event, one of my favorite things about Key West and one that I am very proud to be associated with. 

The new venue turned out to be terrific, as was the weather- which helped immeasurably as it was all outdoors. There was a light rain on Saturday morning, but the tents did the job and it was all good. The wild Key West Chickens and occasional plane noise kind of added to the ambiance rather than detract from it and the presentations on stage were as good as ever.

The list of writers who did show up, in addition to the ones we picked up at the airport included Cheryl Tan, Judy Blume, Michael Carroll, Billy Collins, Colum McCann, Lisa Taddeo and Edmund White. Even with seven writers pulling out, it was still a very impressive line-up and they all seemed genuinely happy to be here and happy to be participating at an in-person event.

The site and set looked amazing thanks to our technical crew led by Ben Pegg with stage design by Marky Pierson and Jack McDonald. The backdrop reflected the theme of desire (i.e. sex) and was beautiful and perfect for the occasion.