Submit to the 2019 Convention

Photo Source: Fashion Video About Edna Mode From The Incredibles

Monday, October 1, our submissions system for the Sigma Tau Delta 2019 International Convention in St. Louis, MO, opened up wide and said to the world, “Send me stuff!”

It didn’t really open its arms to embrace the world, but I like to think of our data management system as a living, breathing thing, working diligently on our behalf, scooping up your poetry and fiction and drama and essays, cataloging all of it, and making it available to our reviewers who generously contribute their time.

Let’s call our data management system “Edna.”

So what is Edna hoping you will send? Edna waits eagerly for you to take a set of your poems and figure out how they speak to one another, title them into a collection, and submit them. She expects that some of you have stories for her—perhaps these are stories that stand alone or sections that you’ve taken from longer works, or maybe they are collections of flash fiction. Perhaps your creative works are non-fiction. Edna would love to serve up creative non-fiction—personal essays, magazine features, long-form journalism—to our reviewers. And, of course, Edna can’t wait to make your critical works available to the judges who help us determine what goes onto our program.

But Edna also loves it when you work together or when you reflect on our Common Reader, Tess Taylor’s Work & Days, or when you consider our theme, Work in Progress. When you submit your proposals for roundtable discussions—whether about the Common Reader; the theme, careers, popular culture, or literary genres; theories; or practices—she serves those proposals up to a group of readers who turn their decisions around so fast that we can notify students who are accepted by November 16! And she particularly appreciates it when roundtable presentations include members of multiple chapters.

Edna, our personified data management system (our own personal librarian), helps us get organized and helps us serve up the best papers and creative works for you to hear and the most interesting roundtable discussions for you to participate in, but she won’t really be at the convention.

Our featured speakers, Nnedi Okorafor and Tess Taylor; our Thursday morning workshop speakers; our student leaders; and your fellow student presenters will be the humans you meet. St. Louis will be my eleventh convention, and I know that hearing our speakers, getting to know my fellow Sigma Tau Deltans, and watching my students blossom as they present their work to the world has been transformative. I know that it will be for you as well.

We (Edna and I) invite you to submit your work to the 2019 Convention, so that you will contribute to our celebration of “Work in Progress.”

Please email all questions to [email protected]

CONVENTION SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 5:00 P.M. CDT

Submissions Overview
Paper Submissions
Roundtable Submissions
Submissions Evaluation Criteria
Hints for Successful Submissions

Felicia Jean Steele
2019 Convention Chair
[email protected]

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