The Emily Dickinson International Society will sponsor two sessions at the annual American Literature Association conference, to be held this year at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero Center in San Francisco May 22-25 2008.

Dickinson's Letters
We seek papers that explore Emily Dickinson's work as a prolific and inventive letter writer whose correspondence often blurred the boundaries between lyric and letter. Papers might consider Dickinson's role as a correspondent, one or more of her epistolary friendships, rhetorical patterns in the letters, manuscript study I editing, ways to use Dickinson's letters in the classroom, or other ways in which Dickinson presents herself as a woman of letters.·

Dickinson and Place
Ideas about place are central to Dickinson's life and work. Dickinson's self-identification with her birthplace as "the Belle of Amherst" and her proud claim that she sees "New-Englandly" tie her to her community and her region, of course, but there are many other ways in which the poet explores ideas about location-geographical, cultural, metaphorical, literary. We seek papers that consider the relationship between the poet and her place(s).