More than 3,000 writers showed up to hear a talk given by a professional housepainter and self-published author about how his two worlds overlap. The attendance was greater than that at any other talk at the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, which is being held in Seattle this year. AWP officials said they thought the heavy attendance was due to a misunderstanding of the title of the event, which was “Stripping and Writing about Stripping.”
Gene Dyeford, the housepainting author at the center of the brouhaha, said that he just wanted to share some of the writing lessons he’s learned through hard experience, and that he was thrilled that so many of his fellow writers turned out for him. “I chose to talk about stripping, because to me, that’s the key step in both painting and writing—and one that’s often overlooked. You have to put in the hard work to get a clean surface, scrape away the old misbeliefs and doubts, if you want to create something new and beautiful. You see?”
Many would-be attendees couldn’t fit in the small conference room assigned to Dyeford, and at the talk’s start time, a large crowd stood outside the door, craning their bodies and standing on tiptoe trying to look in. A small contingent of recent MFA graduates started chanting, “No strippers, no peace!”
One person who actually made it in the room, current MFA student Luke Allison, seemed grateful for Dyeford’s advice. Says Allison, “I think what he said made sense. But to be honest I kept looking to see if there was a curtain or another door where someone else might come out. Then when I realized it was just this dude, I tried to leave but everyone else was pushing in at the door. Then I kind of gave up and sat back down. But, you know, my mom wants me to paint the rec room this summer, so I learned how to use a drop cloth.”
The organizers of AWP took responsibility. “We should have anticipated that the title of the talk could lead to some confusion and asked the gentleman to change it,” said Cindy D’yermaker, AWP’s associate junior vice president for apologies. “Even though the description of the event clearly stated that Mr. Dyeford was a housepainter and wanted to share his experiences related to that fine profession, we should have known that no one reads past the headline anymore, especially writers.”
