AWP (The Association of Writers and Writing Programs) – (1967 to October 25, 2010) One of the longest standing and thereby most-oft-cited-like-prom-in-relation-to-the-space-where-act-is-not-act-but-goober-city events in the lexicon of rising and extending the social life of the author passed away just before someone’s lunch break this afternoon when a mangy maned and business suit clad middle aged man stormed into the AWP offices in Fairfax, Virginia and released an airborne toxin that immediately brought to their knees said officeholders and those in an outlying .5 mile radius of the building. Authorities are still working in their off hours of other atrocities to identify the corpse of the perpetrator despite his wearing a laminated ID tag suspended from a necklanyard relic of the 2010 convention of the AWP faculties and associates in Denver, Colorado, as they quickly found that the name printed on the tag, Alice Munro, was not the perp at all but someone authorities believe may purportedly be a “writer” herself, though not a “writer” capable of such will. A manifesto found on the perp’s body, which was mostly eaten alive by the angry bees attracted by the scent of writer toxin, like sandwich musk and want, while the numerable “highest level” AWP employees, whom no one has ever met, escaped through an unidentified aircraft toward the blinker of the sun never to return, stated the motive for the destruction as such: “I’M FUCKIN SICK O THIS SECRET HANDSHAKE HIPPIE WANKER ASS SHIT WHERE YOU HANDY DANDIES COME AROUND SELLIN YR POETRIES AND YR MAGASHITZINES TO EACH OTHER WHILE WHEN ANYTIME I BRING AROUND MY OWN REALER MAGAZINES AND TALK ABOUT TO TELL YOU WHERE MY LAUNCH PARTY IS AT TONIGHT YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE I’M TREVOR MCDUNNAWAY, WHICH I AM, WHICH TO YOU MEANS SHITZIP AND I’M FUCKIN SICK OF TYPING AND I MISS MY DAD MOTHERFUCKER FUCK WRITING BITTCH YR SERVICES ARE VOID.” Eighteen copies of the remainder of the manifesto, which the perp, who has since been identified not as the aforementioned “TREVOR MCDUNNAWAY” carried on his person extended in one long armreach with a pricetag of $24.95 in softcover with “discount sale!” stickers reducing said price to $22.90, were still held tightly by the author’s corpse against his sternum so well infused that his remains will be cremated, along with the lanyards and programs and attendance roster of the previously planned 2011 convention of AWP to be held in Washington D.C., a fire that burned purple for six hours in the light of the other ashes in our special government atrocity cremation center before finally muttering out into another pile. Subsequent strains of the airborne toxin, briefly considered deadly to all nations, have been found to only affect those of the weakest temperament to sick, via skins of thin mettle and minds of weak acumen predetermined to attend panels on Life Poetics in the Work of Cracker Barrel Anthologies and Nature as Conduit for Metaphor, and even in those few sadly exposed bodies only inducing mild conditions of pasty foreskin/labia, heavy breathing, and sometimes a hunger for flamebroiled meat. Book objects and chapbooks remaining unsold and thereafter abandoned at AWP locations of the past 40 years will be donated to a new, more vital writing services program, where the corpus of such paper will be burned to heat the homes of indigent but still somehow willful writers. Anyone not already involved in publishing their own magazine had no comment on the logically pragmatic death, though remembrance services for Mr. “MCDUNNAWAY” will be held at Shortback Books in downtown Presererancese, Wisconsin featuring readings by Bob Hicok and Steve Almond. Remembrance services for AWP will take place over the next two to seven years as longtime members, attendants, would-that-I-were-not-married-I-could-have-gotten-out-there-cuz-I-hear-sometimes-there-are-people-there-who-both-like-books-and-will-fuck persons, and please-emblazon-my-name-on-your-paper-I’ll-do-anything-even-though-there’s-nothing-to-do-but-keep-pretending-I’m-listening-and-shake-some-hands-with-eyes-averted-and-keep-drinking hucksters spread the flame of memory from one to another via the age-old echo party celebration cue, “Are you going to you AWP?,” which regrettably this year must be answered by one and all, “I can’t.”