MFA Residency Public Lecture and Reading Schedule for Friday, July 5th

Readings and lectures are held in the Canon Lounge on the Warren Wilson College Campus

Friday, July 5th  

9:30 AM

ALAN SHAPIRO–Mark Twain and the Ambiguities of Expertise

As teachers and writers, we often talk about the creative process in contradictory ways: on the one hand we celebrate the importance of craft, which is to say, of knowing what we’re up to when we write; on the other hand, we say that at our best we write by instinct, intuition, hunch, we try not to know too completely why we do what we do. We advocate for expertise and we distrust it. In this lecture we’ll look at Life on the Mississippito see what Mark Twain’s description of his training to pilot a steamboat can tell us about these inherent and inescapable tensions between will and inspiration, calculation and intuition when it comes to writing poems and stories.

                                                            10:45 AM                                                            

T. GERONIMO JOHNSON–Scene It Again?

We’ll explore dramatic scenes as a narrative tool for demonstrating character transformation that readers can “witness.” We’ll look at a range of scenes from implied to full, the use of scenic overlays, and ways to achieve the scenic in brief. This is a toolkit for revision. Texts discussed will include Joshua Ferris’s “The Dinner Party” and Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Pet Dog.”

8:15 PM

FACULTY READINGS by 

Karen Brennan

David Haynes

Kevin McIlvoy

Pablo Medina

Alan Shapiro

The public is welcome to attend the morning lectures and evening readings in fiction and poetry offered during the Master of Fine Arts Program summer residency.  Events last approximately one hour. Admission is free. The schedule is subject to change. 

For more information, call the MFA Office: (828) 771-371