AN INTROVERT’S GUIDE TO WRITING CONFERENCES

Oregon author and essayist Tom Titus knows that getting out into the world and interacting with people is beneficial to his writing career. But as an introvert, he finds it’s the last thing he wants to do.

“It requires a lot of energy to be an introvert in an extroverted world,” Titus explains, describing the daunting crush of 15,000 people in hallways and in workshops during the AWP Conference in Portland last spring. Fortunately, he met a woman in the registration line who knew his writing from a nature anthology. She became his conference “buddy,” someone he could check in with periodically by text or in person to ground himself in the crowd.

“She was a great conversationalist, anxious to ask me questions about myself, and I was happy to talk about myself,” he says. “At one point during the conference, she