Graduate CW Programs

And let's dust off The Atlantic Monthly's excellent feature on MFA programs, for those of you thinking five to ten years into the future (always a dangerous endeavor).

Undergraduate CW Programs

Here is an exhaustive list of what the Association of Writers & Writing Programs thinks a good undergraduate creative writing program should offer. It's right on the money.

Here's a completely unscientific (and utterly non-exhaustive) list of interesting places to study creative writing as an undergraduate:

Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA)
Knox College (Galesburg, IL)
Hollins University [womens' college] (Roanoke, VA)
Emory University (Atlanta, GA)
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC)
DePauw University (Greencastle, IN)
Davidson College (Davidson, NC)
Kenyon College (Gambier, OH)

Most of the schools above award writing-related scholarship money (for current and/or prospective students) and/or prize money (for current students).

Below you'll find five totally random BFA programs in creative writing. There are others, I'm sure. What's a BFA, you ask? Hrmm. Well. I mean. You know. We'll talk. Here's those five schools:

University of Maine - Farmington (Farmington, ME)
UNC - Wilmington (Wilmington, NC)
Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, OH)
Converse College [womens' college] (Spartanburg, SC)
Chatham University [womens' college] (Pittsburgh, PA)

Lastly but not leastly, Alabama isn't a bad option for undergrad CW-study either, though you're very likely to get an MFA student as a teacher for some of your classes, and it's nearly impossible to get out of taking the Intro class. They have a great reading series, though, and the full-time faculty is good -- both in the classroom and in helping their students further their "careers." Anecdotally, I've heard mixed reviews for some of the other schools in the state.

The other "strategy" (such as it is) is to go to one of them high-falutin' Ivy League (and its ilk) schools. Columbia. Princeton. Harvard. Yale. Etc. Lots of published writer types -- and the people who publish them -- have matriculated at those sorts of places (and that's likely to continue). If you got a spare $150-$200k rattling around in your pockets, go for it.

Truth is, you can make your writing life happen wherever you go to college. It's up to you.

Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz

(posted for Amber)

Dean Koontz (1945 - Present) is an extremely successful American writer in many different genres. He graduated from Shippensburg State College (Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania) in 1967 and was an English teacher for a year before his first book – a science fiction novel called Star Quest written in spare time – was published in 1968. He has since gone on to write a LOT of bestsellers in multiple genres from scifi to horror, suspense to satire. For fear of loosing loyal genre fans, he went by pen names for much of his different genre work among them Deanna Dwyer, K. R. Dwyer, Aaron Wolfe, David Axton, Brian Coffey, John Hill, Leigh Nichols, Owen West, Richard Paige, Leonard Chris, and Anthony North. Though not exactly the most acclaimed writer in literary circles, he’s frequented the New York Times Bestseller List with ten hardcover and fourteen paperbacks in the number one spot over the years and is tied with John Grisham for the spot of 6th highest paid author. He currently lives in California his wife and attributes much of his inspiration to his late golden retriever, Trixie Koontz.

Life Expectancy is (IMO) a suspense/ thriller piece about a man (Jimmy Tock) whose dying grandfather, on the night of his birth and even in the same hospital, suddenly made multiple predictions about his life and gave a list of five terrible days that he would have to face. Promptly after that and at the very moment Jimmy was birthed, he died. This all happens in the first chapter, leaving about sixty more to show him going through his life preparing for and trying to survive the days of his grandfather’s prediction. Challenges faced include eccentric grandmothers, battling a family of psychotic clowns and other circus performers, mouth-watering scenes of family dinners, meeting the love of his life, and raising three children all afraid of monsters in the closet.

Koontz does a phenomenal job in Life Expectancy of balancing Jimmy’s normal life and its supernatural elements. Though much of the novel is pretty outlandish, the narration and the crazy plot are really addictive, and keeps you turning the page. Simple language, quirky descriptions and really open 1st person narration create a good read that I think we can take notes on.

interpreter of maladies by jhumpa lahiri

So one of the books I read was "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri. It's a collection of nine short stories... and it also happened to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000. But that's not why I picked it. The reason I selected it was because we read one of her short stories (which is in a different collection of short stories) in English class and really loved it, and I felt the same way about this. The stories, while all very different, are about Bengali Indian-Americans and the way their nationality has affected them. All nine stories are heavily influenced by food and family.

Lahiri, who immigrated to America at the age of 1, is extremely well educated. She grew up in Rhode Island, and most of her fiction is autobiographical, laced with the experiences she's had. She went to college forever: she got her BA in English, and has three masters degrees in English, Creative Writing, and Comparative Literature, as well as a PhD in Renaissance Studies.

The other books she's published, one novel and one other collection of short stories, have also been very sucessful.

The Knight by Gene Wolfe

It has been some time since I read this book, nearly a month, but of the novels I have finished this year this one has been, by far, both the most enjoyable as a reader and the most interesting as a writer. The author is Gene Wolfe, a sort of wild card in fantasy whom I have been meaning to sample at some point yet have never had the time. He is old and well-regarded, one of the most prolific writers in the field, who could decorate his coat with as many awards as a five-star general. He was born in New York, began his higher education in Texas before being drafted into the Korean War. Upon returning to the states, he finished his education at the University of Houston and became an industrial engineer. His first novel was Operation Ares, a dismal failure both critically and commercially. His second major published work, The Fifth Head of Cerburus, was a widely succesful novella (practically an oxymoron in and of itself) called by Gardner Dozois the best novella of the 1970's. His most famous work is the Book of the New Sun, a vast and subsersive series of fantasy novels. He has no creative writing degree, two Nebula awards, five Locus's, and three World Fantasy Awards. He is famous for his ambiguous, mysterious, and difficult prose, and his gift for first-person narratives of unreliable characters.

So, The Knight.

This is a very odd book, in multitudinous ways. The back-cover blurb names it a YA book, and indeed the protaganist is a young boy, but I can barely imagine the plight of a twelve year-old trying to barrel through the obscure prose. The plot is both simple and dastardly complex. A young boy from our world, while living in a woodsy cabin with his older brother (their parents mysteriously and unremarkedly absent,) one day wanders out to the lake and, playing in the sand, is magically transported to a world of fantasy, a world comprised of seven stacked planes. He arrives in the middle plane of Mythgarthr, and finds himself under the tutelage of a onetime warrior named Bold Berthold, a man who thinks that our protaganist, himself never named, is his little brother. Over an undisclosed period of time, the protaganist finds that he too cannot remember which brother was the real one, Berthold or the one from our world. It is not all metaphyiscal misrememberence, though, as the protaganist accepts the blessing of a fairy queen and takes upon himself the name Sir Able of the High Heart, and sets out on an adventure to recover his blade Eterne from a dragon. Through the book, Able discovers that not everything is how it seems (or perhaps it is? Crypticism is part and parcel for The Knight) and finds himself dragged along by a near-infinite number of powers from Mythgarthr and the other six planes of this strange fantasy world. If this makes little to no sense, then I have explained it correctly.

I was unprepared for this novel. To an extent, I knew what to expect from Wolfe's subsersive writing style. I knew I was not going to experience the average fantasy novel, but I did not realize just how different Wolfe's voice is from the traditional fantasy writer. In fact, it is written as if unaware of all other traditions, as if the novel believes it is the first written about knights and dragons and a boy coming-of-age. This novel was excrutiatingly clever. The voice was that of a child's, using simple vocabulary and uncomplicated sentences. It shocked me how boldy Wolfe, frequently described as a prose master, used such an "idiot's voice" at the primary style of the novel. It intrigued me how he would describe a glorious vista in a way a child might, simple and even a bit ugly, yet expressing the beauty of the sight without using beautiful words. Wolfe has made me question, a little, my traditional baroque style. If he can achieve so much classical beauty with so little description, and so much modern commentary with so little conceptualizing, how then do I justify my heavy-handed description porn and blatant philosophizing? Wolfe has put these questions in my head, and now I am given to ponder them.

In all, a strong book, a surprising and tricky book, by a writer who certainly deserves his place in fantasy literature.

--CLAY GREENE

The Stranger by Albert Camus

This novel is about a young man named Meursault, and he lives in the Algiers. He recieves a telegram that informs him of his mother's death and so he jumps on a bus and rides to Marengo. His mother had been living in an old person's house and by the time Meursault gets to this house, he finds that his dead mother has already been sealed into her coffin. The old person offers to open to coffin so he can see his mother, but Meursault declines. He attends the funeral the next morning and then hops back on a bus to the Algiers.

At this point in the novel, Meursault decides that he wants to go for a swim at a public beach and happens to run into his former co-worker, Marie Cardona. They get along great and decide to go see a comedic movie that night...and he plays his cards well and she stays the night with him. However, when he wakes up, she is not there and he passes the morning watching cars go by on his porch. The following day, Meursault goes to work and then comes home. While climbing the stairs to his apartment, he runs into a man with a mangy dog and a man named Raymond, who is also a pimp. Raymond invited Meursault over for dinner and the conversation at dinner leads to how Raymond beat up his mistress because she cheated on him and how that lead to a fight between Raymond and his mistress' brother. Raymond now wants to torment his mistress even more, and so Meursault agrees to write a letter that will lure her back to Raymond.

The next day Marie returns to Meursault's apartment and asks him if he loves her. He is basically like, eh. The conversation is interrupted by a police force in Raymond's apartment a few doors down that claim Raymond beat up his wife. Raymond asks Meursault to testify for him in court, and he agrees...

Marie asks Meursault if he wants to marry her and he is like, eh, but they get engaged anyway. They go to a beach with Raymond and run into Raymond's mistress' brother, who is an Arab. Raymond wants to shoot him, but Meursault tells him not to and takes his gun. However, Meursault goes back to the spring later on where he sees the Arab and shoots him for no reason. He goes to jail.

In jail, Meursault feels no remorse for his crime, or even that his mother died a little while ago. A magistrate comes and tells him to swear his faith on a cross, but Meursault refuses because he does not believe in God. Marie visits him once in prison, reminds them of their marriage to be. Meursault adapts to life in prison, the lack of women, cigarettes, and nature. He learns to keep his mind on other things...and since I will not reveal the ending, I will just say that this narrator wrestles with believing in a purly physical world and if this view of life is good enough to live on.


*Written by Albert Camus who won the Nobel Prize in 1957, the second youngest person to receive it and at 44 years of age. He schooled at the University of Algiers and received something similar to an M.A. He is often associated with existentialism. I discovered after reading this novel, that I really like this style of writing. It takes a human subject and incorperates their feelings, actions, the whole living individual, and his or her own conditions of existence and questions them. It is a complete disorientation of what you think you know.

Killing Yourself to Live, 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman

This is the nonfiction tale of Chuck's road trip to visit landmarks of rock legend's deaths. But this is only the plot on face value, past that he uses his epic journey to discuss and reflect upon his relationships with three separate women. He goes so far as to categorize all the women he has dated in his life as all the band members of KISS. Mixed in with the examination of pop songs, music history, and drugs/alcohol are philosophical musings on the meaning of life and death.

Chuck Klosterman is obsessed with Pop Culture. It has been the focus of all of his books. His vaguely stream of consciousness style and constant references put some people off, and he has always polarized critics. Some hold him up as a master of his style, someone of value, while the others see him as a false persona who is only catering to his publishers by churning out fabricated "true stories". Both sides of the table seem to be adamant that their opinion is one hundred percent right. He has published six books since 2001 and is if not well liked, then at the least well known. He began his career as a journalist for a newspaper in his home state of North Dakota. After, he became and arts critic and then moved up to be a senior editor of Spin. Since being fired, he has been a regular contributor in many publications and has published his first novel. He graduated from the University of North Dakota in 1994, but I can't figure out what his degree was in.

Salvation on Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington

In 1992, pastor Glen Summerford of the Church of Jesus with Signs Following was convicted of attempting to murder his wife with rattlesnakes. After the trial, the church he left behind in Sand Mountain, Alabama was at a loss. Dennis Covington was a freelance journalist who covered Summerford's trial, and he soon became invested in the church and its struggle to continue. In Salvation on Sand Mountain, Covington describes his experience in the snake handling church community of the Appalachias, and the way in which this frenzied faith causes him to wrestle with his own beliefs and history.

Dennis Covington grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. He earned a BA degree in fiction writing at the University of Virginia, then joined the United States army. After being discharged, he enrolled in the University of Iowa Writer's workshop. His first book, Lizard, won the Delacorte Prize in 1991, and Salvation on Sand Mountain won the Rea Non-fiction Prize and was a National Book Award finalist in 1995. He served for a time as the director of creative writing in the English department at UAB.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

The book itself is a tale of a boy named Kvothe who grows up from boyhood into his early teens through the book. It is implied that this boy will achieve great things, but we will have to wait till the next book comes out to get all the juicy details. Keep 'em comin', I say. This is his first book, and already it is a New York Times bestseller. Impressive. He went to college for nine years, unable to picka mojor until he finally graduated with a degree in English. He went to graduate school and then went back to his old school to teach. He sent his novel off to, well, pretty much everywhere with no luck until he cut a piece and used it as a shortstory for a contest. It won, and he went to a writers workshop in LA. It was because of this that he eventually found his editor and sold his book. I guess everybody gets one.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Dodie Smith (1896-1990) was an English novelist. She was a christian scientist and attended school at the Academy (later the Royal Academy). She lived in London and tried to act, but later turned to writing plays and novels. Her husband, Alec Beesley, was a conscientious objector which caused them both to relocate to America during WWII where she published i capture the castle. Her most famous story is The Hundred and One Dalmatians. when Smith died in 1990 she had herself cremated and her ashes were scattered in the wind.

I capture the castle is a story that examines the life of two sisters (Cassandra and rose) their flamboyant commune-with-nature stepmother, their has-been father, and two new neighbors. However, the narrator, Cassandra, is also extremely interested in capturing the essence of their life and the beauty of their home. she examines their house from many different views -- at different times in the day, in her memory, inside, and out. this might be very boring if she lived in suburban America, but Cassandra lives in a dilapidated castle in England full of splendor and history. A lot is learned about the family through the descriptions of the castle.

Cassandra's family isn't that well off. Their father was once a successful writer but hasn't written or published anything since their mother died. The stepmother is beautiful and eccentric. The two girls are bored. The story takes them through interesting and new experiences all triggered by their new American neighbors. The mystery behind the castle combined with the coming-of-age story-line create a new, ornate, finely woven story.

Smith pays a lot of attention to detail. The story is in an epistle style, and Cassandra's writing and observations improve as the story goes on.

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger

Nine Stories is a book by J.D. Salinger with, shockingly, nine short stories. Each one is told with a really composed voice although nothing very significant or dramatic happens (with the exception of Bananafish, which Flynn gave his fiction class last semester), there definitely a feeling of unease and unrest in all of them. All involve very ordinary and real life characters. Salinger also spends a lot of time on dialogue, and it is what drives most of the stories. The clips of setting and thought he gives the reader seem immaterial, but add to the reality and show how simple the story is. One of my favorite stories is about two women in a middle-class setting who are catching up since they haven't seen each other since college. It's kind of interesting because it seems like they secretly hate each other, and don't bother being nice, but it's obvious they do mean something to the other. Neither one of them are nice people, but they aren't unordinarily awful... it's kind of amusing banter. It seems like all of the stories play with sarcasm a good bit too. I aspire to this wit.

Ella already told everyone about how reclusive Salinger, and essentially, that's all I can find about him too. He did get married, a couple of years after he published Nine Stories, and made his fiance drop out of college four months before she graduated. His daughter has published a memoir about how crazy her father was and his always trying to find a set of beliefs so he could lead a different life. Nine Stories was acutally published after Catcher in the Rye, but that was the last for almost a decade. Then he published another book, never to be heard from or seen again... kind of.

Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation by Charles Barber

Comfortably Numb is a non-fiction exploration of the medication of America by Charles Barber. I chose it first for its attractive cover (oops, I broke the cliche) but mostly because I've always been fascinated by psychiatric medication. Charles Barber worked as a counselor for the homeless mentally ill for the past fifteen year and has watched America's attitude towards mental illness change dramatically. When he first started his work, mental illness was an issue just for 'crazy people', hidden away at all costs, and the drugs for it, while not easy to come by, were relatively inexpensive. Flash forward fifteen years and suddenly everyone is admitting their depression and bipolar disorder and guess what? Prices for the drugs have shot through the roof. Along with the attitude inspections, Barber spends a lot of time on the pharmaceutical industry and how much it wants to make money. America is one of the only countries that allows direct-to-consumer advertising for psychiatric drugs, and the book almost suggests that the money involved feuls the need for the chemicals. About 3/5ths of the way through the book it becomes rather repetitive and seems as if the author was simply fluffing for length, but the hard facts of the book combined with his personal insight made it worth the read.Here's some info about the author:

--attended Harvard University and went to Columbia for grad school

--worked for 10 years specifically with the homeless mentally ill in New York City, at places such as the Bellevue shelter

--his work has been published in the The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Nation and Scientific American Mind

--he taught nonfiction writing at Wesleyan University--he's currently a lecturer of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and runs a social service agency, 'The Connection' (which kinda sounds like a cult)

--well his website says he's a senior executive, he's actually the Director of Special projects. He helps them write grants and works with the Department of Correction to bring evidence-based practices to work-release programs around the State. which doesn't make a lot of sense, but alright

.--I have been able to discover that he has a family and lives in Connecticut, but according to the internet his life began at college

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UAB Visit on Wednesday

In preparation for our UAB visitor on Wednesday, here's a link to the Honors Program website. A few ASFA CW alums have had good experiences with it.

Angels in America by Tony Kushner

So the book I read was called Angels in America by Tony Kushner, and it features Angels, America, and pretty much everything else you could possibly imagine being in a book. Technically it’s a play in two parts, set in New York City in the 1980s. Including both parts, the play lasts about seven hours, and therefore Kushner goes deeper into his characters and their situations. Due to its length and complexity, it’s hard to pinpoint what this play is about. It’s about alienation, death, religion, unhappiness, delusion, truth, acceptance, guilt, cowardice, and judgment. In short, Angels in America chronicles the lives of multiple people in the 1980s. The main character is Roy Cohn, a ruthless lawyer who feels no remorse for his ruthless persecution of Ethel Rosenberg and prides himself on his political connections. He is dying and can do nothing about it. His loss of control and his unchanging convictions make up much of the play. Other characters include Joe, a Mormon working for Roy who tries to come to terms with the harm he’s caused, Harper, his Valium-addicted wife, and Hannah, his no-nonsense mother. In another subplot, Prior Walter is also dying of AIDS and is visited by an angel who claims that he is a prophet. Prior was abandoned by his lover, Louis, when Louis learned of Prior’s disease. Unable to deal with caring for a sick man, the politically active Louis is racked with guilt and questions, while Prior has trouble acting as a prophet in New York City. Basically, all these characters and all these plots somehow come together, amid some surreal trips to Antarctica and Heaven (which looks like a rundown San Francisco).

Tony Kushner was born in Manhattan to a clarinetist mother and a bassoonist father. Unsurprisingly, he was actively involved in policy debate through high school, but it’s interesting to note that he first graduated from Columbia University with a degree in medieval studies. He studied directing at NYU graduate school where he began to write his own plays. Angels in America is his most famous work, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, but he has written other plays, as well as essays, operas, the book for a musical, and even a children’s book with Maurice Sendak. His work often includes surreal situations (like angels and ghosts and visions) as well as a focus on his extremely political leanings and Jewish upbringing. Additionally, he helped adapt Angels in America into a miniseries. I haven’t seen it, but it has Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, and Mary-Louise Parker in it, so it has to be pretty good.

By the way, the picture is Tony Kushner when he was at Columbia University participating in (what else?) a protest.

Wyvernhail by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

The second book I read was Wyvernhail by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. I sort of wonder if its a bit like cheating, because it was a book I hadn't read in a series of books I've been reading for a while, but anyway, quick series overview: The main people of the Earth are shapeshifters, and the series focuses on three sects of these people, the avian (bird people), the serpiente (snake people) and the shm'Ahnmik (falcon people). The avian and serpiente's had been at war for centuries until (in the first book) the Serpiente Prince and Avian Princess married and bound the two courts together with their child (a "wyvern" Oliza), who is supposed to take over the throne when she gets old enough. . Which was all well and good until Oliza runs off with a wolf-shape shifter to live with her clan, leaving Wyvernhail without a Queen, which is where the book picks up.

Book overview: Basically Wyvern Court (the place where the remainder of the avian and wyvern race has come to live together) is in an uproar because they don't have a Queen, and the next in-line is Hai, a magically disabled formerly-insane half-serpiente half-falcon (no one really trusts the shm'Ahnmik) who still has magically induced black outs that tend to end in her uncontrollably large power attempting to destroy anyone and anything near her. Hai is also the main character of this book. This is a fantasy novel. Y'know, in case you couldn't tell. Atwater-Rhodes is very much a YA Fantasy novelist, and one of the main things that I noticed in this book, because it had been a while since I'd read the others in the series, was how well she recapped events that had happened already. Usually in just a sentence or two she identified people that had been around for the last four books, highlights two books worth of history in one of Hai's off-hand thoughts. I thought that this control, and the way Atwater-Rhodes is obviously very familair with the world she's created (the history is complex but believable, and even the languages she's created seem logical and well planned) were very impressive to me.

About Amelia Atwater-Rhodes:

- She published her first book "In The Forest of the Night" in 1999. When she was 14. Feel free to seethe along with me. (I read it when I was about 14, it was pretty good)

- She's been called the "teen sucessor to Anne Rice"

- She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts with a double-major in English and psychology.

- She's published 8 books (all YA novels) since "In the Forest of the Night", five of which are in The Kiesha'ra Series

- She basically runs her website.

-Danielle

The Disappointment Artist by Jonathan Lethem

(posted for Abby)

I read The Disappointment Artist, by Jonathan Lethem. This book is a collection of creative nonfiction essays, particularly about Lethem's youth and strong influences on his life, such as his parents. Even as a teenager, he was very attentive to social and cultural themes, as well as the New York art scene. While reading his essays, I could tell he was very intelligent. He has a special place in his heart for his mother and his parents’ hippy ways, and isn’t afraid to reveal his innermost thoughts with his audience. He writes about various topics, such seeing Star Wars over twenty times, to the subway station he used to wait in as a kid, to the sci-fi novels he threw himself into. He talks about his obsessions, his successes, and his failures, which ultimately make the collection a bittersweet reading experience.

About the author Jonathan Lethem (writing career 1989-?):

-has written 7 books, first published novel: 1994.

-has written 4 collections, first published collection: 1996.

-has written 4 "other books," (novellas, etc.) first published "other book:" 2000

-has written over a hundred essays + reviews + short stories

-has edited 5 books and written about 20 introductions

-born in Brooklyn, NY and trained to become an artist (like father), mother was politically leftist and parents held an open marriage, which greatly affected him, so did their bohemian lifestyle--the eventual death of his mother haunts his writing today

-attended the High School of Music & Art to be an artist-went to Bennington College in Vermont (1982) as a prospective art student, dropped out halfway through sophomore year

-from there, he hitchhiked from Denver to California, then worked as a clerk in used bookstores for twelve years, writing on his own time

-(1999) first mainstream novel, Motherless Brooklyn, earned a National Book Critics Circle Award

-(2003) The Fortress of Solitude became a New York Best Seller

- Links:
http://www.jonathanlethem.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Lethem

College Essay Prep for Tomorrow

FYI: Mrs. Rutsky will be posting some essay samples on Naviance this evening. She'll put them in a news article on the front page where you log in titled “Essay Workshop.”

Final Projects

And of course you wouldn't want to forget your final publication project. It's due May 19. You may work in groups or alone. In the comments section of this post, please write a short project proposal explaining what you're going to be working on and if you're going to be grouping up or working alone. Options include (but are not limited to) broadsides, chapbooks, e-zines, etc. You are limited only by your imagination and the bounds of decorum. Ask me if you have questions.

Book Report Posts

Here's your mission: you have to have a Gmail account to post to the blog. If you don't have one already, please set one up (yourname[at]gmail.com or something similar) and e-mail me the address. I'll set the blog permissions so that you can post your book blurb.

I'm looking for just a meaty paragraph or two. Maybe a sentence or two to set up the ground situation and the book's major theme. Then a few sentences on what you thought of the book and what it taught you as a writer. Also provide a little bit of bio information about the author with a link or two to reputable sources for more info if we want to look further into the book/author.

Don't stress about it. This is not a huge deal. Imagine you're e-mailing a writer friend about the book you're reading. Informal, hit the high notes, and give a little insight into how it's influencing your ideas about writing.

Book Report Posts Due: No later than Thursday, April 30.

Conferences, Round #2

As a reminder: this time when we conference, I want you to give me a selection of work you might submit to a lit mag. That means you want to select your most finished work. I also want you to have a sense of where you want to submit it so that we can gameplan that process. Here's a general idea of what I'm looking for:

--Seven to ten pages of poetry (at least five poems).

...OR...

--Twenty-five pages of prose (at least two stories or essays).

These are ballparks. I humbly request you don't swamp me with 75-pages of prose. First of all, that'll make it tough for me to give you a thorough, timely reading. Second, most lit mags like prose to come in at under (sometimes well under) 5000 words. 75-pages of 5000-word stories would be about five stories. Five pretty big stories. Keep it to two or three, especially if they're long(ish).

Norman Mailer National High School and College Writing Awards

Here's an outstanding opportunity that is tailor made for this class. Start thinking about what you want to submit; we'll send them in when we get back from Spring Break.

Norman Mailer Submissions Due: No later than Thursday, May 7.

CW "Job Description"

Go to Ye Olde Sharepoint to download the CW "Job Description" for your resumes. If you have questions about my notations, ask me.

Quote of the Day (and Perhaps Millenium)

From a June 2008 NY Times interview with well-known novelist, essayist, and "public intellectual" Gore Vidal, who is getting way up there in years and has gotten to the point where he pulls no punches. (Truth be told, he was never one to pull punches even in his heyday.)

NYT: Do you read a lot of contemporary fiction these days?
Vidal: Like everyone else, no, I don’t.

Ha! The writer's temperament is to 1) giggle at such a statement in a funny-cuz-it's-true sorta way and then 2) to keep right on writing anyway, just because.

Lit Mags in Alabama

For next Tuesday, make a list of all the literary magazines you can find in Alabama. Rank your top-3 in terms of "prestige" and your top-3 in terms of accessibility to an unpublished writer. Be able to explain your choices.

Week #8 Prompts

...Start a story in the present day. A land-line telephone rings in an old house. [Probably this house is situated just outside a village that stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." Or not.] Let the phone ring. And ring. While it's ringing, write a story in flashback from the perspective of the character who is ignoring the phone.

...Write 25 lines of blank verse about the Birmingham Zoo.

...Write an essay about the cultural significance, as you understand/experience it, of the McDonalds french fry.

Closing the Loop on Agents

I want to reiterate that, in talking about how a book gets published, I'm not trying to discourage you. I just want you to have a realistic idea of the process. I also want to give you a sense of how you can successfully navigate it. Two things will make it infinitely easier:

Patience.

Patience is required because writing is a longitudinal pursuit. Remember that you'll still be a "young writer" for another 20+ years. In Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, he argues that success is (among other factors) largely a result of something he calls the 10,000-hour Rule. To be really good at something, says Gladwell, you have to do it for 10,000 hours. Twenty hours a week for ten years. Depending on how you use your Silent Studio time (!), you're varying degrees of way ahead of the game.

Patience is also crucial because, even after you've put in your 10,000 hours, publishing -- whether it's a single poem or a massive Fantasy tetrology -- isn't so much a meritocracy. It's all subjective. As you learn your markets, you'll be better able to target your potential audience, but it still takes good timing and luck. And patience.

Friends.

First and foremost, it's easier to do anything when you have a vibrant life of connections -- whether they're writing connections or not. But as far as publishing goes, the hands-down best way to get your work noticed by the right people is to have a personal connection with them. Or at least to have friends who have direction connections with them. Here's what our good friend Nathan Bransford has to say about the subject, but keep in mind that this holds true when you're trying to get work in literary magazines, get grants, attend selective conferences and/or grad programs, etc:

Referrals are a great way to find an agent, and for many of your more experienced/legendary agents they're darn near essential. And it's easy to see why -- you're coming in with an endorsement from someone the agent respects, you've got their attention, and you're more likely to get a thorough look.

How do you get a referral? It's kind of tricky. If you don't have preexisting personal connections, the best way to do this, especially if you live in a big city, is to get involved with local writers communities, fraternize with writers, and put yourself in a position where your work will be seen by other established writers. Genuinely (and not selfishly) invest in those writers and you may find that they will invest in you -- trust me, they remember what it was like to be an aspiring writer. If you don't live in a city, get your stories published in journals, become involved with writers' blogs and online writer's communities, and really invest in authors until you are virtual friends.

Now, notice that I didn't suggest the "e-mail random writers and ask for referrals out of the blue" approach, which has about a zero chance of success. These things have to evolve organically.

Organically. As in, like real human beings do. So dust off Ye Olde Dale Carnegie and get out there and mingle, people!

I guess the last thing I'll say about publishing a book is that it's probably best to think of it as a by-product of the patience, hard work, and discipline to keep writing combined with a willingness to establish and maintain connections with other writers. By and large, those are all good things in and of themselves. The book's just gravy.

Okay, in the righthand column, under "Useful Publishing Links," I've added a link to Bransford's blog. I've also included another agent's blog, a woman named Janet Reid. They both have links to other blogging agents as well, so you should be able to get a range of voices, opinions, and insights about commercial publishing.

P&W Interview: Four Editors

FYI: Here's an interview with a gaggle of book editors. A pull quote from the set-up:

While it goes without saying that our problems are nothing compared with those of many industries, one's heart can't help but ache for the literary magazines and publishing houses that won't be around in a year; the unemployed editors, publicists, and marketing people with mortgages to pay; the authors whose first books are being published now, or a month from now, or anytime soon.

But difficult times don't have to be joyless times. As I listened to these four accomplished young book editors talk about what they do, I was reminded of a simple and enduring truth, trite as it may sound: We are all—writers, agents, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and readers—in this together. And there are concrete things we can do to connect with one another more effectively. These editors are full of insight about how to do just that.

See? Connection! Writing is an act of CONNECTION!!

Prep for Mrs. Rutsky's Visit Wednesday

You'll notice the Finaid.org link on the righthand column of the blog. Here's a specific link to the Expected Family Contribution Calculator. (This is the one Mrs. Rutsky wants you to check out with your parents tax forms, if possible.)

Also take some time to make a list of expenses for things you think you'll need in order to be completely content in college -- and then a more bare-bones list of absolute essentials you can't live without.

Mrs. Rutsky will be back with us on Wednesday afternoon.

Week #7 Prompts

Write a poem to, for, or about Robert Mugabe.

Write an essay about winter weather in Alabama.

Write a story in which a small blue stone plays a crucial role.

Literary Agents and Commercial Publishing

A couple or three links to check out for our conversation on Thursday:

...Here's a literary agent's blog. Informative stuff. Scroll down and pay particular attention to his "Essentials" link list. (Also of interest: this post on the number and type of queries he received just over the Presidents' Day weekend [that's three days to you and me]).

...Here's an exhaustive list of agents in North America, along with the colorful commentary of one writer who has spent a good bit of time sparring with them.

...Finally, here's an excerpt from a great interview in Poets & Writers with a well-known agent named Nat Sobel:

How is being a writer different today than it was when you started out as an agent?
I think it's easier for the writer. Today writers are a lot more aware that they need an agent than they were then. The so-called slush pile at publishing houses is almost nonexistent today—a lot of writers languished in those slush piles for years. I think writers were often tempted by ads run in the writers magazines by agents who charged exorbitant fees to have their manuscripts evaluated," and much of that has disappeared. By and large, writers get responses from agents much quicker today because of e-mail. I think the process has fewer mines in the ground for writers to avoid. But on the other hand, it's much more difficult to get published if you're a fiction writer. It's a bit of a tradeoff.

Why do you think it's more difficult to get published as a fiction writer?
I think you have to really look at the market today. If you look at the Deals page of Publishers Weekly, nine out of the ten deals described are nonfiction books. There certainly is a very strong feeling in the publishing world that fiction is chancier—absolutely chancier—than nonfiction. Today, you have to have all sorts of other reasons to publish a first novel—other than that it happens to be very good.

What do you mean by that?
We keep hearing this phrase, "What's the platform?" What's the [expletive] platform? The first time I heard the word platform was at a writers conference. I was on the dais with another agent and she was talking about "the platform." I thought, "What the [expletive] is a platform? What is she talking about?" Well, what it is is this: What does the author bring to the table? Talent is not enough. The number of slots open to fiction on a publisher's list is being reduced all the time. But that wasn't always the case.

What do you see as the reason for that shift?
I think there are a lot of reasons. It's not just the conglomeratization of publishing and the slow disappearance of the independent booksellers. But maybe it's easier for the sales rep to go and sell a nonfiction book that he hasn't read, or she hasn't read, than it is for the rep to go in and sell a first novel that he or she hasn't read. As the sales forces of the major publishing houses have become decimated, there really is very little time for any of these reps to read the first fiction on their list. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Almost more to the point, I think, is how agenting has changed in the last ten years.

I read something where you were talking about how many agents there are now, as opposed to the old days when there weren't as many, and the importance to a writer of picking a good one.
Yes. And how do you know if you've got a good one?


Want to know how? Click here for the entire interview. Pay particular attention to page 4 of the interview.

Week #6 Prompts

Write a story in which the surface tension driving the narrative is the naming of a new pet. Use that tension to imply some deeper, less obvious tension in the story.

Write an essay of less than 750 words in which you describe how to do or make something that is essential to your personality.

Write a poem in six fairly uniform tercets. Use the following rhyme scheme:

a
b
a

b
c
b

c
d
c

d
e
d

e
f
e

f
a
f

Week #5 Prompts

Write a story about a spy. It should be a fast, easy read. The first paragraph should include the following features: a dusty open-air cafe; Tangiers; a small, cylindrical device; a boy who doesn't speak English and is either blind or barefoot, but not both; hot tea in clear glass cups; and an explosion.

Write a villanelle to, for, or about Aldrich Ames.

Write an essay about a time when you could not keep an important secret.

On "The Writers' Workshop" and Other Intensive Academic Writing Programs

In preparation for our little "Stone Reader" mini-series, I want you to be familiar with the Iowa Writers' Workshop in particular -- where our idiosyncratic hero, Dow Mossman, got his MFA -- and I want you to start thinking about the idea of writing programs in general. As such, read both of these. Please.

This is the Iowa website.

This is an article in The Atlantic Monthly about graduate writing programs in general, and the one at Iowa in particular.

As you read both things, I want you to mull this question over:

What connections can you draw between what you're reading and your ASFA experience?

Week #4 Prompts

Write a poem of exactly 50 lines. Don't break stanzas. Each line should have between seven and ten syllables. It can be about anything. Let yourself digress, suturing one thought to the next. The poem should start and end with the same word.

Write an essay about you or someone you know learning how to drive.

Write a story that includes the following:

• a dead king's ghost
• the dead king's sketchy brother
• the dead king's angsty son
• Denmark

Set the story in the year 2666. Feel free to include gale force winds.

Week #3 Prompts

Write a poem to, for, or about Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III.

Write an essay called "Inauguration." It should be about your sixteenth birthday.

Write a story about three friends. Two of them know something the other one doesn't. There's a good chance this story takes place on an unseasonably warm winter day in Alabama in February. Perhaps James Spann appears in the periphery.

Week #2 Prompts: Let's Get This Party Started!

Write a story. This story has five distinct sections separated by five distinct asterisks. Each section consists of exactly 100 words. There is a new setting in each section. Each section introduces a new character. The climax occurs in section four. The only character in the last section is the new character you're introducing to conform to the fifth requirement of this insane prompt. Probably in this story there is a slight but persistent wind.

Write a three page essay in one paragraph that consists almost entirely of digressions. The essay should be titled either "Beauty" or "Salt."

Write a poem about your least favorite uncle.

(Man. That was fun.)

Life Skillz 101: Budgeting

Not just because it's fun but because it can help you start to get a sense of where you want to be as a person (and an artist!) in five years, I want you to complete a mock monthly budget. Here are the parameters:

For hypothetical purposes, we'll say you're going to get an entry-level job in writing or communications. That means your salary will likely be somewhere in the $30k to $40k range, depending on what you do and where you live. (Yes, even if you live in NYC, your entry-level salary is not likely to be much higher than $40k -- could be lower. In fact, generally speaking, the cooler the entry-level job in NYC, the lower the salary.) The convenient thing about this number is it's fairly close to the ballpark of what you'd get with a bachelor's degree and limited experience in most other fields as well.

So after taxes that means your monthly gross pay of $2,500 to $3,500 turns into something like $2,000 to $2,500 net (take-home) pay.

Noodle around with those numbers on the budget sheet I gave you. Think about different scenarios -- what are the numbers like if you live in a major city versus coming back to (staying in) Birmingham? What are the numbers like if you have roommates? What are the numbers like if you have no finance payments (loans, credit cards, etc)? What about if you have significant finance payments?

Use a pencil so you can erase, adjust, and start all over if you have to. Look things up on the internet. Ask your parents for their thoughts and insight. That's part of the assignment, in fact. See if they'd add categories or subtract them, and what their thoughts are in general about starting out life on your own after college.

And if it seems like we're jumping the gun -- talking about life after college before you even apply -- I'll grant you that point, but only to a degree. Financial decisions you make prior to and during your time in college will have an influence on the options you have after it. I want you to have as many viable options after college as possible. College is supposed to open up opportunities (both in the near and far term), not limit them.

We'll sit around and crunch numbers together on Thursday, and that'll hopefully lead us to some great new understanding about how the business of life affects the life of an artist in the great big wide world.

Philippe Petit: Up Close and Personal

An interview with our friend Phil Small.

Eustace: Up Close and Personal

Course Requirements: Micro-Level

This course requires some flexibility, but in general the weeks and days will look like this:

Mon - Wed
3:15 - 4:00...Two options. Read. Write. No exceptions.
4:00 - 4:30...Independent work. Conferences.

Thu
3:15 - 4:00...Group Discussion. Presentations.
4:00 - 4:30...Independent work. Conferences.

A Note on Independent Work. Ask yourself these questions. What can I write? What can I read? What CW work do I have pending? What other ASFA homework do I have pending? What would Peter do? Any of these pursuits are likely to be worthy uses of your time.

Conference Drafts

Conference 1. For your first conference, you'll submit new work you've written in/for this class. It must be in a genre other than your third period workshop genre. In general, I'm looking for five (5) poems or a piece of prose (fiction or nonfiction) in the neighborhood of ten (10) pages.

Conference 2. For the second conference, you'll submit finished work in all three genres that you are thinking about sending to literary magazines. I want five to seven poems, an essay, and a story. The prose pieces should be in the neighborhood of ten pages each (within five pages either way) using 12-pt. Times New Roman and standard margins. That's somewhere between 1,500 and 5,000 words for each prose piece. Ballpark.

You can include work from current or past workshops for the final conference. You're trolling for your absolute best work in each genre here. Like, of all time. It's okay to submit work that has won a scholastic award of some kind, but it's not okay to submit work that has been published in any way, shape, or form. Even in Cadence.

Our task will then be to decide what you're going to submit (and where you're going to submit it) for publication.

Final Project

You will publish and distribute a piece/collection of writing that is not your own. That is all.