So as I find myself in the early stages of my third semester in Spalding University’s MFA in Writing program, it seems an appropriate time to take a cue from a fellow Spalding student and friend Colleen Harris and share with you readers my cumulative bibliography to date. It is copied below, and I ask you to feel free to make suggestions about things I have not yet read that perhaps I should – especially in the genre of creative nonfiction, which is what I’m finishing my degree in. This includes memoir, essays, and the like.
To be clear, these are only books I’ve read and absorbed since beginning the MFA program a little more than a year ago, so it is certainly conceivable that you might suggest something I’ve already read, but I welcome any suggestion anyone has. Really. I mean it.
Meanwhile, I’m hard at work at my extended critical essay, or ECE in Spalding parlance, and am actually enjoying composing it quite a bit. It’s about how yearning compels empathy and action in memoir. I’ll let you know when I’m done.
Here’s the list:
Buckley, Christopher. No Way to Treat a First Lady: A Novel. New York: Random House, 2003.
---. Supreme Courtship: A Novel. New York: Twelve, 2008.
Butler, Robert Olen. From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. Ed. Janet Burroway. New York: Grove, 2005.
Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral.” Cathedral: Stories. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1984. 209-228.
Conroy, Frank. Body & Soul: A Novel. New York: Delta-Random House, 1993.
---. Stop-Time: A Memoir. New York: Penguin, 1997.
DeLillo, Don. Falling Man: A Novel. New York: Scribner, 2007.
Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Driskell, Kathleen. Seed Across Snow: A Collection of Poems. Los Angeles: Red Hen, 2009.
Ellroy, James. My Dark Places: An L.A. Crime Memoir. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1997.
Emerson, Claudia. Late Wife: Poems. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2005.
Finch, Robert. The Iambics of Newfoundland: Notes from an Unknown Shore. New York: Counterpoint, 2007.
Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines. New York: Quill-HarperCollins, 2003.
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2003.
Goodman, Richard. French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2002.
---. The Soul of Creative Writing. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2008.
Gorman, Jacquelin. The Seeing Glass: A Memoir. New York: Riverhead, 1998.
Herr, Michael. Dispatches. New York: Vintage International-Random House, 1991.
Holloway, Monica. Driving With Dead People: A Memoir. New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007.
Iyer, Pico. Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign. New York: Vintage-Random House, 2004.
Jones, Edward P. Lost in the City: Stories. New York: Amistad-HarperCollins, 2003.
Katz, Jon. A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me. New York: Random House, 2003.
Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Anchor, 1995.
Le Guin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew. Portland: Eight Mountain, 1998.
Lisberger, Jody. Remember Love: Stories. Louisville: Fleur-de-Lis, 2008.
McClure, Tori Murden. A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean. New York: Collins, 2009.
McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: ReganBooks-HarperCollins, 1997.
Moehringer, J.R. The Tender Bar: A Memoir. New York: Hyperion, 2005.
Moffett, James and Kenneth R. McElheny, eds. Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories. New York: Mentor, 1995.
Monsoon Wedding. Screenplay by Sabrina Dhawan. Dir. Mira Nair. Mirabai Films, 2001.
Oates, Joyce Carol, ed. The Best American Essays of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Rev. ed. New York: Three Rivers, 2004.
O’Brien, Tim. In the Lake of the Woods. New York: Penguin, 1995.
---. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.
Patchett, Ann. Bel Canto: A Novel. New York: Harper-Perennial, 2005.
---. The Patron Saint of Liars: A Novel. New York: Harper-Perennial, 2007.
---. Run: A Novel. New York: Harper-Perennial, 2008.
---. Truth & Beauty: A Friendship. New York: Harper-Perennial, 2005.
Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. New York: Plume-Penguin, 2006.
Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. New York: Gotham, 2006.
Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life: A Memoir. New York: Grove, 1989.
Wood, James. How Fiction Works. New York: Farrar, 2008.
I can't seem to figure out how to get things underlined in this blog, alas... please understand that all titles are underlined in my official cumulative biography. Same goes for the hanging indentation that doesn't translate when I copy here. LOL...
Namaste.
Showing posts with label Spalding University. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spalding University. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Post MFA Residency
All right, so I had an initial goal of blogging each day during my recent MFA residency at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. I made it to Day Two.
They keep you busy there and exhilarated and excited and challenged and inspired. It was a wonderful residency and terrific to reconnect with students and faculty I’ve known from earlier residencies and to meet some of the newbies – fresh-faced, with big plans, I’m delighted to welcome them into our fold.
Being among a community of writers is a wonderful thing if you are a writer. It makes you feel less alone. Less odd. Less solitary.
Upon returning home to Chicago last Sunday afternoon, I was hit with the reality that the contractors were still not done with our bathrooms – you know, the ones that were supposed to be completed before I left for my ten-day residency? On one hand, the work they’ve done is top notch and looks great (and, I’m very grateful for that) yet on the other hand, God supposedly made the world in six days and these guys have taken nearly thirty (more than twice what they thought it would take) to do two bathrooms!! It’s endlessly distracting to have people banging and pounding on walls and floors and whatever else they can decide to bang and pound on. Not the most conducive environment for writing.
But, I do not wish to complain.
Residency was great. It’s wonderful to be back home with my lovely wife Gloria and our two adorable dogs. And, the bathrooms are almost done.
Namaste.
They keep you busy there and exhilarated and excited and challenged and inspired. It was a wonderful residency and terrific to reconnect with students and faculty I’ve known from earlier residencies and to meet some of the newbies – fresh-faced, with big plans, I’m delighted to welcome them into our fold.
Being among a community of writers is a wonderful thing if you are a writer. It makes you feel less alone. Less odd. Less solitary.
Upon returning home to Chicago last Sunday afternoon, I was hit with the reality that the contractors were still not done with our bathrooms – you know, the ones that were supposed to be completed before I left for my ten-day residency? On one hand, the work they’ve done is top notch and looks great (and, I’m very grateful for that) yet on the other hand, God supposedly made the world in six days and these guys have taken nearly thirty (more than twice what they thought it would take) to do two bathrooms!! It’s endlessly distracting to have people banging and pounding on walls and floors and whatever else they can decide to bang and pound on. Not the most conducive environment for writing.
But, I do not wish to complain.
Residency was great. It’s wonderful to be back home with my lovely wife Gloria and our two adorable dogs. And, the bathrooms are almost done.
Namaste.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
MFA Residency – Day 2
It is now Saturday night, May 23rd, nearly 9:00 pm and the end of the first full day of residency here at Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program. The day was, well, in a word: long. And, this is not just according to me. I heard it time and again from students and faculty members alike. It was also: terrific, exciting, exhilarating, and inspirational.
That’s kind of what residency is all about. We are thrust into the company of a number of writers in all sorts of genres with varied interests, lives, talents, and ways of looking at the world. Today was the first day of workshop and the first full day of lectures and readings and sharing meals together. Some are down in the lobby of the Brown Hotel right this moment sharing a beer or a glass of wine or – given that we are in Kentucky, after all – a glass of fine bourbon. (I will join them there soon!)
The final event of this day was the first installment of Spalding’s Festival of Contemporary Writing, featuring six faculty members reading from new and/or recent work. Dianne Aprile, Greg Pape, Jody Lisberger, Ellie Bryant, Philip Deaver, and Mary Waters each read this evening and each was positively delightful in their own particular ways. What a pleasure (and inspiration) to hear such magnificent work from these faculty mentors (many of whom I’ve worked with and/or come to know over the past year).
Tomorrow we’re at it again and I, for one, can hardly wait.
Namaste.
That’s kind of what residency is all about. We are thrust into the company of a number of writers in all sorts of genres with varied interests, lives, talents, and ways of looking at the world. Today was the first day of workshop and the first full day of lectures and readings and sharing meals together. Some are down in the lobby of the Brown Hotel right this moment sharing a beer or a glass of wine or – given that we are in Kentucky, after all – a glass of fine bourbon. (I will join them there soon!)
The final event of this day was the first installment of Spalding’s Festival of Contemporary Writing, featuring six faculty members reading from new and/or recent work. Dianne Aprile, Greg Pape, Jody Lisberger, Ellie Bryant, Philip Deaver, and Mary Waters each read this evening and each was positively delightful in their own particular ways. What a pleasure (and inspiration) to hear such magnificent work from these faculty mentors (many of whom I’ve worked with and/or come to know over the past year).
Tomorrow we’re at it again and I, for one, can hardly wait.
Namaste.
Friday, May 22, 2009
MFA Residency – Early Day 1
I arrived in Louisville, Kentucky a little before 8:00 p.m. last night having left Chicago right around 12:30 yesterday afternoon. This morning I’ve been rereading and revising my comments regarding the writing of five of my fellow MFA students with whom I’ll be in workshop these next ten days.
This afternoon things begin with a meet and greet of sorts followed by dinner and then the Book-in-Common discussion led by Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund and Associate Program Director Kathleen Driskell. This residency’s Book-in-Common is Claudia Emerson’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book of poetry, “Late Wife.” “Book-in-Common” means that all MFA students regardless of genre or term within the program read the book prior to residency for a full group (plenary) discussion. Later in the week, we’ll have the opportunity to meet and speak with Claudia Emerson, which is always a highlight of the residency here at Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program.
Soon, I will meet up with one of my fellow students for lunch at the Bluegrass Brewing Company, a nifty bar and restaurant just across the street from the Brown Hotel. Fellowship with other writers is one of the most enjoyable and gratifying aspects to the 10-day residencies we have twice a year here. Writing is such a solitary vocation most of the time that being able to share notes and work and thoughts and victories and frustrations with other writers is very welcome, indeed.
Spalding is a highly supportive community of writers and I’m enjoying the anticipation of all getting under way, of seeing the many friends I’ve made within this community, and, most especially, of continuing on my journey to try to be a better writer.
More to come… Namaste.
This afternoon things begin with a meet and greet of sorts followed by dinner and then the Book-in-Common discussion led by Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund and Associate Program Director Kathleen Driskell. This residency’s Book-in-Common is Claudia Emerson’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book of poetry, “Late Wife.” “Book-in-Common” means that all MFA students regardless of genre or term within the program read the book prior to residency for a full group (plenary) discussion. Later in the week, we’ll have the opportunity to meet and speak with Claudia Emerson, which is always a highlight of the residency here at Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program.
Soon, I will meet up with one of my fellow students for lunch at the Bluegrass Brewing Company, a nifty bar and restaurant just across the street from the Brown Hotel. Fellowship with other writers is one of the most enjoyable and gratifying aspects to the 10-day residencies we have twice a year here. Writing is such a solitary vocation most of the time that being able to share notes and work and thoughts and victories and frustrations with other writers is very welcome, indeed.
Spalding is a highly supportive community of writers and I’m enjoying the anticipation of all getting under way, of seeing the many friends I’ve made within this community, and, most especially, of continuing on my journey to try to be a better writer.
More to come… Namaste.
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