Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Winter
Once again, it's been too long since I've written.
So the winter quarter has seen a lot of action out here. Our visiting writer for the quarter is Brad Watson. He's from Mississippi, and I've been reading his book, The Heaven of Mercury, and it's really good. Some great necrophilia in there. Brad's kind of a good ol' southern boy, real laid back. He lifts the gag rule during workshop, which is interesting--the writer gets to chip in at moments and he'll ask us to participate in the discussion from time to time, if we like. At this level, it doesn't hurt, because no one is up there defending their work, so it's fine.
Since Geoffrey Wolff is retiring, there's a serious job search going down out here. So there's been candidate writers. First was Jim Shepard. Shepard was really engaging and witty--charming. He read a story that will be in the fiction issue of the Atlantic this year, a great story about Chernobyl.
Ben Marcus, Stuart Dybek, and Charles Baxter where are on the periphery for a while, but they are all officially no longer available.
The next day we had Ron Carlson, from ASU. I had lunch with Latiolias and Carlson. It was nice of Michelle to invite me. With both writers all the MFAs got a two hour session to talk with the writers and ask them questions. Again, Shepard was funny, and had everyone laughing for two hours, while Ron was such a presence--like a fiction mountain. He really impressed me--he could rattle off scenarios and scenes and characters to give examples of stuff and I really felt like here was someone who could flat out teach.
There was a poetry reading tonight. Tomorrow after workshop, Geoffrey Wolff is reading, then next week Anthony Giardina will be here reading and doing the talk--he's a candidate as well. I read one of his books, Recent History the first half of which I adored.
All that! I'm interviewing Brad for Faultline, the lit journal based out of UCI. Plus I'm preparing for a composition conference in Chicago- CCCC- I don't know why I agreed to that. I was told it would look good on a CV, which I hate to say it, would be important being that most MFAs aren't worth a whole lot more than the ink on 'em. Good thing is I'm all done with workshop for the quarter--I submitted week one and week five. So I'm done for now.
And I'm having surgery on spring break, right after I get back from Chicago. And by the time I heal, the spring will begin. Geoffrey's last quarter.
So there!
So the winter quarter has seen a lot of action out here. Our visiting writer for the quarter is Brad Watson. He's from Mississippi, and I've been reading his book, The Heaven of Mercury, and it's really good. Some great necrophilia in there. Brad's kind of a good ol' southern boy, real laid back. He lifts the gag rule during workshop, which is interesting--the writer gets to chip in at moments and he'll ask us to participate in the discussion from time to time, if we like. At this level, it doesn't hurt, because no one is up there defending their work, so it's fine.
Since Geoffrey Wolff is retiring, there's a serious job search going down out here. So there's been candidate writers. First was Jim Shepard. Shepard was really engaging and witty--charming. He read a story that will be in the fiction issue of the Atlantic this year, a great story about Chernobyl.
Ben Marcus, Stuart Dybek, and Charles Baxter where are on the periphery for a while, but they are all officially no longer available.
The next day we had Ron Carlson, from ASU. I had lunch with Latiolias and Carlson. It was nice of Michelle to invite me. With both writers all the MFAs got a two hour session to talk with the writers and ask them questions. Again, Shepard was funny, and had everyone laughing for two hours, while Ron was such a presence--like a fiction mountain. He really impressed me--he could rattle off scenarios and scenes and characters to give examples of stuff and I really felt like here was someone who could flat out teach.
There was a poetry reading tonight. Tomorrow after workshop, Geoffrey Wolff is reading, then next week Anthony Giardina will be here reading and doing the talk--he's a candidate as well. I read one of his books, Recent History the first half of which I adored.
All that! I'm interviewing Brad for Faultline, the lit journal based out of UCI. Plus I'm preparing for a composition conference in Chicago- CCCC- I don't know why I agreed to that. I was told it would look good on a CV, which I hate to say it, would be important being that most MFAs aren't worth a whole lot more than the ink on 'em. Good thing is I'm all done with workshop for the quarter--I submitted week one and week five. So I'm done for now.
And I'm having surgery on spring break, right after I get back from Chicago. And by the time I heal, the spring will begin. Geoffrey's last quarter.
So there!
