Blog

The seminar slots today were the conclusion of Heather Sellers’s three-part pedagogy workshop dealing this time with syllabus planning and interviewing for academic jobs. There were a number of good ideas offered up. Overall I found Heather’s seminars far more helpful than her books. Also on the docket today was the “wildcard workshop.” The idea […]

The mid-point of the residency and the traditional morning-time reading and writing period. I got a bunch of work done including some work on the novel. After lunch we had first synthesis (it was interesting to see someone else’s take on the time). Interestingly, it seemed that most of the synthesis groups finished up early. […]

The morning seminar was John Capouya talking about ways that as writers of fiction or narrative non-fiction we can employ some of the techniques of screenwriting. There’s a lot to be said for the highly formalized structures that screenwriters apply from the “save the cat” approach to making the protagonist sympathetic to the audience to […]

Today started with a conversation with agent Chris Parris-Lamb.  It was a fairly well conceived presentation, although most of this was things that I already knew. A few choice quotes: Most important thing is to make the book as good as possible. Wait and take your time. Your query letter needs to be as well-written […]

Don Morill’s seminar was “Sentences & Paragraphs as Aesthetic Performance.” There were some interesting thoughts on linguistic structure and how it can be enhanced, although perhaps the most interesting part of the seminar came early when he produced Su Hui’s “Star Gauge” Courtesy of some aspects of Chinese linguistic structure the above can be read […]

And what Sunny would like to say, but doesn’t, is that she’s afraid that after living here she’ll go home no different. She’ll be the same as she was, and she won’t have learned anything about anything. Maile Chapman, Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto

And I’m back. Today I inaugurated a new tradition for the first day of the residency. Unlike past residencies, I managed to make it to the meet and greet not only on time, but a bit early. There was the usual mix of greeting the old and familiar and meeting the new and the strange. […]

On the train, Pasquale was still thinking about tennis. Every point ended with someone missing; it seemed both cruel and, in some way, true to life. Jess Walter,Beautiful Ruins

A missed opportunity here; when else, and where else, will she ever be asked to dance again? The answer is never, and nowhere. Maile Chapman, Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto