MFA Residency: Tuesday, January 6th

Public Event Schedule

9:30 AM
Ransom Fellowship Hall
C.J. HRIBAL: You Are Not Who You Think You Are: Meditations on the Second Person Voice

Stories, novels, and poems written in the second person are sometimes (often) seen as the redheaded, left-handed, ungainly second cousin of writing prose and poetry. A recent column in the NY Times recently argued, essentially, “Don’t!” But sometimes that voice, that persona, works marvelously. I’d like to examine when and how to use the voice for its best effects. I’m particularly

interested in when it’s used occasionally within a story—such as Susan Minot’s “Lust”—as part of a story’s “republic of voices.” (I’m borrowing that phrase from the best line in Jay McInerny’s Bright

Lights, Big City: “You are a republic of voices tonight. Unfortunately, the republic is Italy.”) Other writers likely to be discussed include Lorrie Moore, Italo Calvino, Margaret Atwood, William Faulkner, and a number of poets TBD. Handouts will be provided.

 

10:45 AM
Jensen Lecture Hall
ELEANOR WILNER: The Long Approach: An Appreciation of the Life and Work of Maxine Kumin

Fifteen books of poetry, fifty-seven years of a writing life, of a life-long marriage, of wresting pasture from rocks, poetry from the hard facts of the actual–touching on all this, what can be said in an hour.

Suggested reading: Maxine Kumin; Selected Poems 1960-1990 (Norton, 1997) or Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010 (Norton, 2010). Handouts provided.

(Full audio for all residency lectures will be available in the MFA Store in February:  http://www.wwcmfa.org/mfa-store/)

 

Then join us at 8:15pm in Ransom Fellowship Hall for a reading featuring faculty members:

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Dominic Smith

Connie Voisine

Antonya Nelson

For more information, including a full schedule of public events, please visit the program website at http://wwcmfa.org/.