Clifford Garstang's Blog, page 152

William Faulkner at UVA

In the late 1950s, William Faulkner was Writer in Residence at the University of Virginia. UVA has just put an archive of recordings online in which Faulkner talks about his writing and reads from his work. Go to Faulkner at Virginia: an Audio Archive.

Sewanee Writers' Conference -- Day 12

This is it. I head home early in the morning, and so there will be no more posts about Sewanee 2010. It's been a strange day, beginning with a free-form, final workshop session, for which our faculty had nothing planned. So I brought a couple of things to discuss, including Mark Twain's essay about Fenimore Cooper, and a list of opening lines from novels. Another workshop member brought a recording of Flannery O'Connor reading "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

That done, there was time to hit the ...

Sewanee Writers' Conference -- Day 11

Friday was a great day. We started with the last Fellows' reading. First, Jehanne Dubrow read from her book Stateside. Then Cheryl Strayed read from her forthcoming memoir, Wild. And last, M.O. (Neal) Walsh read from his story collection, The Prospect of Magic.

We then were treated to Robert Hass's craft lecture, which began with a plug for Riverofwords.org, an organization that raises awareness of the environment while also promoting child literacy. The subject of the lecture was "One-ness" (...

Sewanee Writers' Conference -- Day 10

On Thursday, the first event was Jill McCorkle's craft lecture in which she employed an extended anatomical metaphor for writing fiction--using the heart and brain working together to create and the lungs to breathe life into the result. (It went on from there: imagine food for thought--the stomach--and the intestines as editors, etc. The bottom line: "Don't keep anything you can live without."

There was an editors' panel after that, but I had work to do and have heard the panel before, so I e...

Sewanee Writers' Conference -- Day 9

Incredibly, we're nearing the end of the conference. Wednesday morning, though, was as full as could be, with wonderful readings and lectures.

First we were treated to Staff readings, featuring the poetry of Hastings Hensel and Adam Vines, fiction by Jonathan Heinen, and a short play by David Roby. Wonderful stuff--I have to say I was especially moved by Hastings's poems--but the Fellows reading that followed was also outstanding.

James Magruder read from his novel Sugarless; Matthew Pitt read ...

Sewanee Writers' Conference -- Day 8

Tuesday: time after breakfast to get a little work done on the stories for the afternoon workshop, but then:

The next fellows' reading featured fiction writer Dylan Landis, playwright Julie Tosh, and poet Will Wells. All terrific stuff. Yay, Fellows!

After that we were treated to Diane Johnson's craft lecture, in which she focused on finding the subject of your writing, by which she really means what she and I both apparently call "aboutness"--the deeper meaning beyond the story. It was an enjo...

Sewanee Writers' Conference -- Day 7

We're past the halfway point, sadly. But Monday was a busy day. We started with a publishers' panel, featuring Kathy Pories from Algonquin, Tod Bottorff from Turner, and Liz Van Hoose from Viking/Penguin. Mostly they talked about their processes and the state of the publishing industry. But they hadn't addressed the issue of short stories and so I asked the inevitable question--what's the state of the story collection market? They confirmed what I knew--and what I thought others needed to hea...

IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY wins Maria Thomas Fiction Award

I'm very pleased to say that my book, In an Uncharted Country, has won the 2010 Maria Thomas Fiction Award from Peace Corps Writers!

Sewanee Writers' Conference -- Day 6

Sundays at the Sewanee Writers' Conference begin slowly. I got up a little later than usual--after the Saturday night Pub dance--and took a long walk. Breakfast was later by an hour. And nothing else was scheduled until 11:00 when Richard Bausch gave a craft lecture. His primary topic was the Art of Exposition in which he elaborated on the concept that the rule of creative writing that we've all heard should not be "show, don't tell," but "show AND tell" because it is crucial to include expos...

Sewanee Writers Conference -- Day 6

Sundays at the Sewanee Writers' Conference begin slowly. I got up a little later than usual--after the Saturday night Pub dance--and took a long walk. Breakfast was later by an hour. And nothing else was scheduled until 11:00 when Richard Bausch gave a craft lecture. His primary topic was the Art of Exposition in which he elaborated on the concept that the rule of creative writing that we've all heard should not be "show, don't tell," but "show AND tell" because it is crucial to include expos...