Category Archives: teaching
Review/Q&A: Lee Martin’s ‘Such a Life’
Stay in love with the journey.—Lee Martin Such a Life by Lee Martin. University of Nebraska Press, 214 pp. Lee Martin, an accomplished novelist, is also a master of life stories. His memoir From Our House focuses on his fraught … Continue reading
Filed under author interview, creative nonfiction, essay-narrative, memoir, MFA, REVIEW, teaching
Review/Q&A: Alethea Black on ‘Lovely,’ faith & fiction, essays & cutting to bone
I can only speak for myself, but there’s something about writing at night that feels . . . sneaky. There’s an outlaw quality to it, combined, oddly enough, with a sense of being safe. It has an anaerobic, subterranean feel; … Continue reading
Filed under author interview, Dillard—Saint Annie, fiction, MFA, poetry, REVIEW, revision, spirituality, teaching
Memories of me & Harry Crews . . .
. . . but mostly of me, 1973–1977 for Tom I was a college freshman in 1973, and drove to school from our Florida beach town in a Triumph convertible with my eight-track blaring “Angie” by the Rolling Stones. I … Continue reading
Filed under essay-narrative, fiction, journalism, memoir, MY LIFE, poetry, teaching
The leverage of persona in memoir
Childhood tales by Jeannette Walls, Harry Crews & Annie Dillard Joining millions of others, I’ve now read Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle. Walls wins the prize for modern memoir’s most dysfunctional family, edging out even Frank McCourt. Yet her … Continue reading
Filed under Dillard—Saint Annie, memoir, narrative, point of view, REVIEW, scene, teaching
About John D’Agata
I believe in immersion in the events of a story. I take it on faith that the truth lies in the events somewhere, and that immersion in those real events will yield glimpses of that truth. I try to hew … Continue reading
Filed under creative nonfiction, essay-lyric, essay-narrative, essay-personal, fiction, honesty, journalism, teaching
Journalism & John D’Agata
“Facts are stupid things,” said Ronald Reagan in one of his priceless gaffes. He meant to say what his speechwriter wrote, that facts are “stubborn things.” They’re both. Reluctantly I address the controversy that’s been raging over John D’Agata’s fictions … Continue reading
Filed under creative nonfiction, essay-narrative, honesty, journalism, teaching
The 100 best nonfiction books?
The Modern Library on its website lists the “100 best” English-language books in fiction and nonfiction. Alongside each are the best according to an online poll—and the readers’ choices consist of much trash: the top three slots of each list, … Continue reading
Filed under Dillard—Saint Annie, fiction, journalism, memoir, narrative, NOTED, teaching
‘Our Secret’ by Susan Griffin
Often I have looked back into my past with a new insight only to find that some old, hardly recollected feeling fits into a larger pattern of meaning.—“Our Secret” Susan Griffin’s long essay, a chapter in her book A Chorus … Continue reading
