Category Archives: MFA

Shirley Showalter, ubuntu & memoir

Become an observer of your own creative process. It will help you uncover where you “sing” and where your voice falls flat. When you lose track of time and are not thinking about yourself at all but rather about your … Continue reading

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Filed under electronic publishing, memoir, MFA, NOTED, spirituality, teaching, working method

One writing teacher’s plight

A short story writer, essayist, novelist, memoirist, editor, and writing workshop leader, Paulette Bates Alden has an impressive blog and web site.  Her wise essays on writing technique and aspects of memoir are stimulating and useful. Lately I’ve been enjoying … Continue reading

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Filed under fiction, memoir, MFA, point of view, subjectivity, teaching

Q&A: Lisa Davis on a Mormon tragedy

The Sins of Brother Curtis: A Story of Betrayal, Conviction, and the Mormon Church by Lisa Davis. Scribner, 368 pages. I met Lisa Davis six years ago, in a creative nonfiction workshop at Goucher College, and I read her recently … Continue reading

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Filed under author interview, immersion, journalism, MFA, NOTED, research, REVIEW, scene, technique, working method

Q&A: Ira Sukrungruang

Following my review of Talk Thai: Adventures of Buddhist Boy, I emailed some questions to its author. Ira Sukrungruang responded with uncommonly helpful answers. He’s only thirty-four, but maybe that’s why: he’s been writing seriously since he was a senior … Continue reading

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Filed under author interview, essay-personal, memoir, MFA, narrative, revision, working method

Can journalism schools teach narrative?

Narrative nonfiction is risky; it has to be grabby, telling, and true. To bear analytical weight, it has to be almost frighteningly shrewd.—Jill Lepore, The New Yorker (September 6, 2010) What is journalism? How does one teach this thing you … Continue reading

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Filed under creative nonfiction, immersion, journalism, MFA, narrative, teaching

Revise, then polish

“The writer who writes for revision does not wait for a final draft but works through a series of discovery, development, and clarification drafts until a significant meaning is found and made clear to the reader.”—Donald M. Murray, The Craft … Continue reading

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Filed under discovery, editing, memoir, MFA, revision, structure, theme, working method