PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE OF LOCATION:

FRIDAY MORNING’S  9:30 am lecture with Alan Shapiro, and Charles Baxter’s 10:45 AM lecture have been moved from Fellowship Hall to NAB 110.

Here is the schedule for tomorrow, Friday, July 13th

 

Friday, July 13                 ALAN SHAPIRO: Poetry and Friendship
9:30 AM   NAB 110
This is a lecture on poetry (and the literary arts in general) as embodied intimacy, a form of connection and
belonging that may be drenched in contemporary culture but whose roots reach back to our human beginnings
(both as individuals and as a species).

Friday, July 13                   CHARLES BAXTER: Wonderlands
10:45 AM  NAB 110
In certain stories, plays, and novels, an x factor occurs so that a metaphorical door closes, whether in the mind or
in the physical universe, and subsequently reality becomes destabilized and nightmarish—becomes a
“Wonderland.” Both reader and character have trouble distinguishing what is ‘real’ from what mysterious x
factor is disrupting the mental or physical landscape. The landscape itself becomes subjectivized and seems to
reflect a dire psychological state or condition. It is as if the landscape itself is gazing back at the viewer or
character. Wonderlands reflect unstable political climates and can be deployed for political purposes,
particularly for minority groups. I haven’t settled on final texts, but I might end up discussing Macbeth,
Dostoevsky’s The Double, Daphne Du Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now,” and Jordan Peele’s film Get Out.

READINGS by GRADUATING STUDENTS

Friday, July 13 ~ 4:30 PM, Kittredge Theater, followed by Graduation Ceremony
William Burnside, Andres Reconco, Leah Nieboer, Anika Streitfeld, Megan Pinto

UPDATE:  Please note tomorrow’s 9:30 am lecture with Robin Romm, Acts of Mercy: Aversion in Fiction, and Kaveh Akbar’s 10:45 AM lecture, Sell Your Cleverness and Buy bewilderment: On the Poetics of Wonder,have been moved from Fellowship Hall to NAB 110.

Here is the schedule for tomorrow, Thursday, July 12th

All lectures will be in Gladfelter, Canon Lounge, unless indicated otherwise.
For more information, call the MFA Office at Warren Wilson College: (828) 771-3715.
The schedule is subject to change. Please check www.friendsofwriters.org for updates.

 

Thursday, July 12                 ROBIN ROMM: Acts of Mercy: Aversion in Fiction
9:30 AM   Ransom Fellowship Hall
Sometimes, what is most intriguing or elegant about a story is the way it avoids and sidesteps our expectations.
Recently, I was struck by the way several of my favorite novels avoid what, in less imaginative books or scripts,
would be considered the “main crisis”—a death, abuse, a crime, choosing instead to focus on a tangent, a vector
that connects to this central crisis, but goes in its own direction. What happens when writers allow this kind of
omission? What happens when they draw us in but never really give us what they promise? Can it actually be
more satisfying? More affecting? More in line with our lived experience of crisis and grief, which is never
straightforward, always filled with bizarre lessons, mysterious revelations? Texts will likely include Blackwater
Lightship by Colm Toibin and My Name is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout, among others.

Thursday, July 12                 KAVEH AKBAR: Sell Your Cleverness and Buy Bewilderment: On the Poetics of Wonder
10:45 AM   Ransom Fellowship Hall 
This lecture tracks a certain strand of poetics through human history, a poetics built upon bewilderment and
awe—what G.K. Chesterton calls the ”vertigo of the infinite.” Much of our species’ richest poetry orbits this
nucleus of wonder—wonder at being, at nature, at grief, love, memory, desire, loss, etc. From the Sumerian
priestess Enheduanna to American visionary Marianne Moore, from Christopher Marlowe to Phyllis Wheatley,
from Sappho to Szymborska, Rumi to Ross Gay, we will examine the human project of astonishment through its
poetic record, wondering and wandering together through four millennia of ecstatic and bewildered verse.

 

READINGS by GRADUATING STUDENTS

Thursday, July 12 ~ in Ransom Fellowship Hall, behind the chapel
Andrew Kane, Shannon Castleton, Marc Morgenstern, Claire McGoff, Lane Osborne, Olivia Olson

Here is the schedule for tomorrow, Tuesday, July 10th

All lectures will be in Gladfelter, Canon Lounge, unless indicated otherwise.
For more information, call the MFA Office at Warren Wilson College: (828) 771-3715.
The schedule is subject to change. Please check www.friendsofwriters.org for updates.

 

There are no lectures scheduled for today.

READINGS by GRADUATING STUDENTS

Tuesday, July 10 ~ 8:00 PM
Lesley Howard, Becky Fink, Paige Patterson Duff, Daniel Jenkins, Gerry Stanek

Here is the schedule for tomorrow, Friday, July 6th

All lectures will be in Gladfelter, Canon Lounge, unless indicated otherwise.
For more information, call the MFA Office at Warren Wilson College: (828) 771-3715.
The schedule is subject to change. Please check www.friendsofwriters.org for updates.

Friday, July 6      MATTHEW OLZMANN: Imaginary Lives
9:30 AM
This lecture will consider the various types of “imagined” moments that occur inside a poem or story. We’ll
look at instances where the speaker worries about what hasn’t happened, envisions something they hope will
happen, or speculates about something that might have happened. Imagined scenes, dreams, impossible
guesses, and hypothetical events. We’ll examine a few different strategies used to move in and out to these
situations. Ultimately, I’m interested in how a type of emotional context is generated by these moments, but
other side effects might become evident, and if so, we’ll examine those as well. No required reading. Handouts
will be provided. Possible examples could include work from Philip Levine, Nicole Sealey, Juliet Kono, and
Lorrie Moore. Other possible poets up for discussion: maybe every poet ever.

Friday, July 6      PETER TURCHI: Don’t Stand So Close to Me (Or Him, or Her)
10:45 AM
One of the most common choices of point of view, often referred to as “close third person,” essentially tells a
story through the thoughts, experiences, and understanding of a single character. Another is what I’ll call
”sincere first person,” in which the reader is never meant to doubt or question the narrator, but is meant to accept
the narrator’s version and interpretation of events. These approaches can work, but they’re often used by default.
In this lecture, we’ll consider the opportunities created by establishing distance between the story and its first
person narrator or point of view character, complicating the narrative surface, making the reader’s experience
more dynamic. We’ll acknowledge that this makes the writer’s job more difficult, and that it might be worth
doing anyway.

 

READINGS by FACULTY

Friday, July 6 ~ 8:00 PM
Rodney Jones, Lan Samantha Chang, Heather McHugh, Kevin McIlvoy, C. Dale Young, Joan Silber