Experimental Fiction Panel at the End of the World

One way to reach the Henry B. González Convention Center, located in downtown San Antonio, is to follow a walkway through Hemifair Park, which leads one through a series of arches along which vines grow, small peach-colored flowers beginning to bud. In early March, the city is experiencing a picturesque spring: the sun shines; the temperature hovers around a pleasant seventy degrees, air freshened with wisteria and the mint-like scent of wild bergamot, birdsong hung in the background like an embroidered tapestry, the pleasant sound continuing long into the mild evenings.

Arriving for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, a person would find no obvious indicators in the city that San Antonio was in a state of emergency, declared by Mayor Ron Nirenberg on March 2 in response to the premature release of a patient with coronavirus into the community. Coming, as it did, two days before the conference was scheduled to begin, the news led to rumors, some attributed to conference staff members, that AWP would be cancelled, and airlines and hotels offered many conference participants refunds before the official announcement came that the conference would indeed go on. I thought briefly about canceling myself, but I had two panels to moderate and was already in Texas, and heading back to New York City hardly seemed more safe. I decided to attend, and the Lyft driver with whom I spoke upon arrival told me that he hadn’t noticed any difference in business or in day-to-day life, which seemed true my first night in the city.

But inside the convention center, it was a different story. The registration line on Thursday morning, usually a long and festive one, with people greeting each other, was nonexistent. Participants simply walked up to a kiosk and printed their registration badge before gathering a tote bag and conference program, the whole process taking perhaps four minutes. Piles of unclaimed tote bags sat on the registration tables.

In the bookfair, booths sat empty. Many small magazines and book presses rely on sales at the conference to fund their operations for the year. Some had decided not to attend; the conference was offering refunds on the fees they had paid for tables. Others had soldiered on, too financially committed or too steadfast to give up hope. Michael Nye, the editor of Story, was cheerful but matter-of-fact about how the low conference attendance would affect sales. “Back issues are hard to move,” he said. “A lot of these will end up just sitting in my basement.”

Four-foot-high beige hand sanitizer dispensers stood by escalators, chugging out foam into outstretched palms, though not many people used them. Walking by meeting rooms, many LED...