At the VQR blog, there's a perfect and funny recap of how AWP feels:
At AWP, you sit at a table in the book fair peddling your literary journal, try to answer writers when they ask why you haven’t published their work, walk past tables of literary journals, wondering why they won’t publish your work, and then attend panels where during the Q&A, writers, instead of asking questions, talk about where they’ve published their work. Then you go to dinner with someone from a slightly better MFA program, someone you only sort of know, who carefully avoids asking where you’ve published your work, and then you choose a bad bar in which to pay too much money for a watered down cocktail, only to end the night walking across the strangely out of place Millennium Bridge, not quite tired enough to sleep and wondering who, in God’s name, will ever publish your work.
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Funny but a bit too consistently snarky, all considered (all being a rep. of VQR). I didn’t go; I can’t afford it. I went on the free day when the convention was in N.Y.C. and was overwhelmed and not enchanted, but the day was made worthwhile by getting to talk with an old west coast friend (why I went). Surely VQR, where the ed-in-chief earns in the six figures (one hears) can make *some* warm connection among fellow writers. I published my collection at age 60, find it near impossible getting the academically connected young ones in N.Y. to invite me to read despite good pub. credits and reviews (I do have an M.F.A. but don’t include on credits and don’t teach); am bitter (and accepting); and find more joy in the company of writers whether they like me or I like them or whatever, than VQR, whch is quite a calling card to bring to AWP.
VQR as an entity did not go to AWP, Sarah. None of our employees went, either. Aja Gabel—who interns here—went on her own, and she wrote about her experience on our blog.
Sarah, I think you overestimate the “connection” that being an intern for a literary journal provides. It doesn’t get you any farther in the slush pile; it doesn’t get anything of yours published faster.
The only advantage it gives is actual experience with the slush pile, so you know what your own stories are up against, and can empathize when someone throws your story out after a page (because you’ve done it to so many stories yourself).