Saturday, January 12th     

Readings and lectures are held in the Region Room of Blue Ridge Center at Blue Ridge Assembly. 84 Blue Ridge Circle; Black Mountain, NC 

Faculty Lectures        

9:30 AM

JANE HAMILTON ~ In Praise of No Big Idea

Many writers seem to feel a pressure to write topically, to take up the mantle of activism in fiction as we try, among other things, to figure out where we are, how we got here, and how to channel outrage into action. Is the coming-of-age novel, then, irrelevant, and that old matter of what it means to be human an antiquated question?  Does every identity group have a different truth, a different answer?  I’m going to consider Jane Gardam’s work, especially her coming-of-age novels, Bilgewater, The Flight of the Maidens, A Long Way from Verona, to try to get at how she writes about matters that were topical to her time without seeming to be topical.  (Has she in fact written “timeless classics”, or is the Brit born in 1928 going to soon disappear from our lists?)  Intercalated into her sentences is a secret mirth.  How does she lace subject-verb-object with joy?  To use Thomas McGuane’s phrase, Can it be said that she has found a language for the real?

 10:45 AM 

MAURICE MANNING – 17 o’clock: Reading and Writing Beyond the Self

This lecture will emphasize the value of reading and writing beyond one’s personal experience and beyond one’s identity in order to dramatize events, situations, and observations that have a broader appeal. Of course, the writer’s identity and experience cannot truly be separated from the writing, but I’d like to explore the possibilities of a literary self, a creature who may be distinct from the person of the writer.  The literary self, to mangle a line from Marianne Moore, dines on imaginary toads while reposing in an imaginary garden.  No advance reading is required.

READINGS by GRADUATING STUDENTS

followed by Graduation Ceremony

4:30 PM

Lillian Huang Cummins

Alyson Dutemple

Angel Nafis

Hieu Minh Nguyen

Rachel Wolff

The public is welcome to attend the morning lectures and evening readings in fiction and poetry offered during the Master of Fine Arts Program winter residency.  Events last approximately one hour. Admission is free. The schedule is subject to change. PLEASE NOTE: The winter residency is being held at Blue Ridge Assemblyin Black Mountain, NC, not on the Warren Wilson College campus.

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

Thursday, January 10th     

8:15 PM

Readings and lectures are held in the Region Room of Blue Ridge Center at Blue Ridge Assembly. 84 Blue Ridge Circle; Black Mountain, NC 

READINGS by GRADUATING STUDENTS

Lily Chiu-Watson

Cecille Marcato

Hannah Torres Peet

Sea Stachura

Candace Walsh 

The public is welcome to attend the morning lectures and evening readings in fiction and poetry offered during the Master of Fine Arts Program winter residency.  Events last approximately one hour. Admission is free. The schedule is subject to change. PLEASE NOTE: The winter residency is being held at Blue Ridge Assemblyin Black Mountain, NC, not on the Warren Wilson College campus.

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

Monday, January 7th     

Readings and lectures are held in the Region Room of Blue Ridge Center at Blue Ridge Assembly. 84 Blue Ridge Circle; Black Mountain, NC 

Faculty Lectures        

11:00 AM                   

C.J. HRIBAL ~ You Want It Darker: Grappling with the Dark in Poetry and Fiction

Writers are “supposed” to write likeable characters with narrative arcs that bend towards, if not justice, at least redemption. But what if things instead bend sinister, descend into the dark, and possibly stay there? How does one write poetry or fiction that engages with the calamitous, the violent, the pessimistic, the tragic, while avoiding the gratuitous? Apocalyptic work seems fitting for these perilous political times. But there is darkness in the everyday as well: dark and violent acts are committed by or visited upon people, particularly the marginalized, and mayhem seems like a plausible response to the outrage. How can writers explore this darkness responsibly? A meditation on grappling with the dark in poetry and fiction. No required reading, handouts provided.

Faculty Readings 8:15 PM

Dean Bakopoulos

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Maurice Manning

A tribute to Tony Hoagland

Kevin McIlvoy, Antonya Nelson, Connie Voisine

The public is welcome to attend the morning lectures and evening readings in fiction and poetry offered during the Master of Fine Arts Program winter residency.  Events last approximately one hour. Admission is free. The schedule is subject to change. PLEASE NOTE: The winter residency is being held at Blue Ridge Assemblyin Black Mountain, NC, not on the Warren Wilson College campus.

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

Saturday, January 5th     

Readings and lectures are held in the Region Room of Blue Ridge Center at Blue Ridge Assembly. 84 Blue Ridge Circle; Black Mountain, NC 

Faculty Lectures        

9:30 AM                   

SARAH STONE  –  Eruption/Incandescence  

In those moments when the suppressed breaks into the open as conflict, as an unexpected action, as a flight of language, or as a confession, a work of fiction or poetry can reveal its teeth. Maybe the characters’ or speaker’s passions take over, maybe there’s a fight or truth that’s been on its way for a while. These eruptions can alter the rules a work has set out for itself in crucial structural and psychological terms and can create openings for complex resistance and re-evaluation on the part of the reader. Possible texts include Gabrielle Brant Freeman, “Girltrap”; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah; Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger; andGeorge Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo.

10:45 AM

                             CHRISTINE KITANO –  The Poetics of Witness                                                                

This lecture will examine the literature of witness, that is, literature that aims, as Carolyn Forché states, to mark “a resistance to false attempts at unification.” Reality is difficult and messy, but the literature of witness and theories of trauma work to elucidate the troubled relationships between author, language, and subject. At stake in these issues are the following questions: What are our responsibilities as readers? As writers? How do we write as witness to the world, and how do we evaluate such writing? Is language capable of bearing witness? What do we do when language is inadequate?  Possible texts: poems by Plath, Lowell, John Yau, Gregory Pardlo, Cathy Linh Che, Solmaz Sharif; fiction and nonfiction TBD.

Faculty Readings 8:15 PM

Daisy Fried

C. J. Hribal

Marisa Silver

Dominic Smith

Connie Voisine  

The public is welcome to attend the morning lectures and evening readings in fiction and poetry offered during the Master of Fine Arts Program winter residency.  Events last approximately one hour. Admission is free. The schedule is subject to change. PLEASE NOTE: The winter residency is being held at Blue Ridge Assemblyin Black Mountain, NC, not on the Warren Wilson College campus.

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