George Saunders Reading at JSC: April 11th @ 5:30!

WHAT:  George Saunders Reads from His Fiction
WHEN:  Wednesday, April 11, 2012 -- 5:30pm
WHERE:  Johnson State College / Stearns Performance Space

Though perhaps our most celebrated satiric and comic American writer, George Saunders is also one of our most serious.  The acuity of his perceptions of American culture and discourse are more than matched by his relentless craftsmanship; yet what drives his fiction is the always-surprising depth of human complexity and sympathy at the heart of his storytelling.

He is the author of the novellas The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil and The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, as well as the short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation.  His works of nonfiction include The Braindead Megaphone and A Bee Stung Me, So I Killed All the Fish.  His writing continues to appear regularly in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and GQ.

Saunders has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship and the MacArthur Fellowship ("Genius Grant") and many other awards.  Ben Stiller purchased the film rights to Saunders's first story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award), and the project remains in development under Stiller's production company.

Here is George Saunders appearing on The Colbert Report:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
George Saunders
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

And here he is appearing on Late Night with David Letterman:



Here he is on KCRW's Bookworm discussing his book of essays, The Braindead Megaphone.

Here is Saunders's appreciation of author Kurt Vonnegut, to whom he is often compared.

Here is one of Saunders's outrageous satires, "Nostalgia," from The New Yorker's Shouts & Murmurs column.

Also, check out his most recent short story in The New Yorker, "Tenth of December," along with an interview about the writing of that very funny yet moving story.

And below are some more interviews with Saunders:

"The Wag Chats with George Saunders"
"George Saunders:  Dig the Hole" in Guernica Magazine
"Knowable in the Smallest Fragment:  An Interview with George Saunders" at Gut Cult
"The George Saunders Interview" at BOMB Magazine Blog.

So Long, Harry Crews . . . So Long, Adrienne Rich . . .

Undergraduate Writing Contest -- Deadline 4/20!

So You Want to Get an MFA?: An Open Letter to My Students

Over at the Huffington Post, Stephanie Vanderslice lops off some valuable advice for potential M.F.A. in Creative Writing students:

"Do I believe the Masters of Fine Arts degree in writing can help writers? Absolutely. I better; I'm directing a brand-new program, the Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop at the University of Central Arkansas, that will welcome its first class in Fall 2012. And I've spent the last ten years researching these programs in the U.S. and abroad, ultimately writing a book, Rethinking Creative Writing Programs: Programs and Practices That Work. I'm also a big fan of the work of Mark McGurl, whose book The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing revealed that the emergence of these programs had a significant effect on the growth of American literature in the last seventy-odd years. Finally, I have the degree myself, from George Mason University, with a specialization in fiction writing.

"For proof that the Master of Fine Arts in writing is a degree that has been hotly debated for decades, we need look no further than Iowa Writer's Workshop alum Flannery O'Connor's famous remark "Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them." After over a decade studying what has been written about the degree, I've concluded that there will always be those who say that creative writing can't or shouldn't be taught, that the programs are rife with teachers who promote generic McStories and McPoems and who lack an understanding of the publishing world, and that the classes themselves are filled with mawkish students interested only in the therapeutic value of self-expression. It's simply too easy an accusation to make and the writers/teachers in the programs are often too busy teaching and writing to defend themselves. I do think there's room for improvement, that's what my book is about, but I also think that we're starting to see programs evolve beyond a curriculum that revolves completely around the workshop. In other words, to quote Sam Cooke, "It's been a long, a long time coming/But I know a change gonna come."

But back to the MFA itself. Here's what I tell my students: . . ." [Read the rest of this article here]

George Saunders Comes to JSC -- April 11th!

Choosing and MFA Program

Puerto Del Sol's new blog offers a great discussion on choosing an MFA program in creative writing:


"At the end of the day, pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing should be about one thing: becoming a better writer. Yet, for those looking into MFA programs, the amount of options can be daunting. There are over 300 MFA programs in North America alone and the reputations, faculty and focus of many programs are constantly shifting. Furthermore, each applicant has needs and responsibilities independent of academic concerns, so how and why one decides on a program ultimately boils down to the individual. Before making the leap, every applicant should be aware of the following considerations: . . . ."
            
                                                                                Read the rest of this article here.

Earl Lovelace reads at UVM on March 20

Earl Lovelace reads from his new book:

Is Just a Movie 

 

WHEN:  Tuesday, March 20 -- 5:30 p.m.
WHERE:  John Dewey Lounge, Old Mill, University of Vermont (Burlington, VT)

Novelist, playwright and short-story writer Earl Lovelace was born in Toco, Trinidad in 1935 and grew up in Tobago. He worked for the Trinidad Guardian, then for the Department of Forestry and later as an agricultural assistant for the Department of Agriculture, gaining an intimate knowledge of rural Trinidad that has informed much of his fiction.

He studied in the United States at Howard University, Washington (1966-7) and received his MA in English from Johns Hopkins University in 1974. In 1980 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent that year at the University of Iowa. After teaching at a number of other American universities, Lovelace returned to Trinidad in 1982, where he now lives and writes, teaching at the University of the West Indies. A collection of his plays, Jestina's Calypso and Other Plays, was published in 1984.

His first novel, While Gods Are Falling, was published in 1965 and won the British Petroleum Independence Literary Award. It was followed by The Schoolmaster (1968), about the impact of the arrival of a new teacher in a remote community. His third novel, The Dragon Can't Dance (1979), regarded by many critics as his best work, describes the rejuvenating effects of carnival on the inhabitants of a slum on the outskirts of Port of Spain. In The Wine of Astonishment (1982) he examines popular religion through the story of a member of the Baptist Church in a rural village. His most recent novel, Salt, was published in 1996 and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book) in 1997. Set in Trinidad, the book explores the legacy of colonialism and slavery and the problems still faced by the country through the story of Alford George, a teacher turned politician.

--British Council Literature website