The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College
Public Schedule – July 2016
The public is welcome to attend the morning lectures and evening readings in fiction
and poetry offered during the Master of Fine Arts Program summer residency.
Events last approximately one hour. Admission is free. The schedule is subject to change. Please
check http://friendsofwriters.org for updates.
For more information, call the MFA Office: (828) 771-3715
Readings will begin at 8:15 PM in Ransom Fellowship Hall behind the Chapel, unless indicated otherwise.
READINGS by FACULTY
Wednesday, June 29—8:00 PM
Karen Bender, Sally Keith, T. Geronimo Johnson, Matthew Olzmann
Thursday, June 30
Christopher Castellani, Jennifer Grotz, Robert Cohen, C. Dale Young, Lauren Groff
Friday, July 1
Charles Baxter, Brooks Haxton, Robert Boswell, Rodney Jones, Joan Silber
Saturday, July 2— (Gladfelter, Canon Lounge)
David Haynes, Daisy Fried, Kevin McIlvoy, Maurice Manning, Steven Schwartz
Sunday, July 3— (Gladfelter, Canon Lounge)
Stephen Dobyns, Debra Spark, Alan Shapiro, Peter Turchi
Monday, July 4—no readings
Tuesday, July 5
Debra Allbery, Karen Brennan, Heather McHugh, Liam Callanan, Ellen Bryant Voigt
READINGS by GRADUATING STUDENTS
Wednesday, July 6
Eilis Maynard, Jill Klein, Erin Salvi, Emily Shoff, Boyce Upholt, William Williams
Thursday, July 7
Emilie Beck, Sharon Gelman, Terrence Krehbiel, Mitzi Rapkin, Margaret Draft, Katherine Rooks
Friday, July 8—4:30 PM, followed by Graduation Ceremony
Chas Gillespie, Daniel Nowell, Jennifer Funk, Taryn Tilton, Leslie Schwerin, Ian Wilson
The schedule of lectures by Warren Wilson MFA faculty follows à
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The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College
Faculty Lectures – July 2016
All lectures will be in Ransom Fellowship Hall behind the Chapel unless indicated otherwise.
For more information, call the MFA Office at Warren Wilson College: (828) 771-3715.
The schedule is subject to change. Please check http://friendsofwriters.org for updates.
Thursday, June 30
11:15 AM
HEATHER MCHUGH: Sad Souls and Oddballs
Ecstatics, melancholics, minders of immensity, auditors of taxonomy, whisperers and wits:
from Smart to Knott.
Friday, July 1
9:30 AM
PETER TURCHI: Digression, Misdirection, and Asides:
The Art of the Left Turn
In Poetics, Aristotle tells us “Stories should not be constructed from irrational parts; so far as
possible they should contain nothing irrational.” Then he acknowledges that Homer indulges in
irrationalities that “would be manifestly intolerable if a second-rate poet had composed them.”
(Lesson: be a first-rate poet.) Finally, Aristotle allows that “even an oddity is possible [if] the poet
conceals the absurdity with other good qualities, and makes it a source of pleasure.”
That’s not exactly what I want to talk about.
Friday, July 1
10:45 AM
STEVEN DOBYNS: The Lyric Element
In the Post-Romantic period, where we are today, what remains important in the lyric poem is
the affective or lyric element, which may refer to anything reflecting moods, feelings, sensitivities,
sensations, attitudes and so on. In poetry, the lyric element, whether purposefully or not, reflects
valuation, while the primary valuation is the communication of emotion. It does this with diction and
syntax along with a whole raft of formal elements. The lecture will focus on these lyric elements, their
use and implementation, as strategies to give credibility to the emotion that the writer is attempting to
express.
Saturday, July 2
9:30 AM
C. DALE YOUNG: Doubt and Uncertainty:
The Interrogative Gesture as Rhetorical Strategy
Writers often feel the drive to be convincing in their poetry and fiction. But often, the way to
convince a reader is by constructing a speaker or narrator who “seems real” to a reader. How does a
writer do this? There are many strategies to accomplish this, but a great many of these strategies reside,
oddly enough, within the architectures of uncertainty and doubt. With an eye focused on the
interrogative, we will examine poems and passages of fiction by Elizabeth Bishop, Peter Cameron,
Flannery O’Connor, Carl Phillips, Eudora Welty, and William Butler Yeats.
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Saturday, July 2
10:45 AM
DEBRA SPARK: Buddy Up, or Learning (More) from Chekhov
A lecture that pairs Chekhov stories with work by more recent writers. I hope to make it clear
that multi-syllable names aside, Chekhov has a lot to do with what writers as different as Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie, Donald Barthelme, Laurie Colwin, Edward Jones, Etgar Keret, and Tobias Wolff are
up to. No required reading, though familiarity with the work of any of the names above can’t hurt.
Sunday, July 3 (Gladfelter, Canon Lounge)
9:30 AM
ROBERT BOSWELL: Making a Scene
Your parents asked you not to make a scene, and now I'm going to ask you to do the opposite.
No advance reading is required for the lecture (so far). I'll try to apply what I've learned from
playwriting to fiction writing.
Thursday, July 7
9:30 AM
JENNIFER GROTZ: Ut Pictura Poesis
“Moi aussi je suis peintre,” once claimed Guillaume Apollinaire. This lecture will be an
exploration of how and why that statement might be true and a consideration of the longstanding and
varied relationship between poetry and painting. We will ask the question of what it is that poets might
learn from looking at painting, concentrating on form, content, and perhaps most of all, process.
Thursday, July 7
10:45 AM
T. GERONIMO JOHNSON: The Sentence: Our Sentence
Francis Christensen believed that the writer makes a point by adding, not by taking away.
Gertrude Stein insisted that the sentence is not emotional but the paragraph is. Annie Dillard once told
someone who asked her if he might become a writer, “I don’t know. Do you like sentences?” But, what
exactly is a sentence, and how is one born? Better yet, what is an effective sentence, and how is one
built? Setting aside notional rules of grammar, we’ll explore strategies for fashioning compelling
sentences. By analyzing and emulating a couple of models, and ransacking a few unsuspecting
theories, we’ll discover that, more than anything else, this is an education of both the heart and head.
Friday, July 8
10:00 AM
ALAN SHAPIRO: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Decorum
This lecture explores the concept of decorum. The central question it will ask and attempt to
answer is this: in what ways does our historical moment inform if not determine our sense of propriety,
or aptness; in an ostensibly informal democratic culture, committed in theory if not in practice to
egalitarianism, how do we determine high or low, too much or too little, in style as well as subject.
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Friday, July 8
11:15 AM
CHARLES BAXTER: A Dialogue on Dialogue
Hey, everybody: let's put on a show! I want to illustrate some features of dialogue, particularly
distracted dialogue, which is as much a part of our time as distracted driving. Also: the three types of
dramatic scenes; silences; ping-pong dialogue; cruel triangulations; verbal redundancy; selfinterruptions; actual interruptions; and dialogue in poetry. Most of the texts will be on hand-outs, but
you might want to look at Richard Bausch's story "Tandolfo the Great" and study the dialogue about
enzymes.
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