The Writing University Podcast

Most often we encounter work on the page, but haven’t we all had the experience of being transported by hearing the author give a reading of his or her own work? What happens when we have the opportunity, as listeners, to hear literature presented directly by the author? And what happens, as writer, when we have the opportunity to embody our work before an audience? This talk will give practical advice about preparing a public reading of your work: how to select and edit work for a public reading, how to approach the audience, and how—imagine this!—to enjoy the special energy of presenting your work to an audience. In addition, this talk will suggest ways that public readings are effective ways of promoting your work and entering more fully and deeply into a literary community.

The elegy offers one of poetry’s most appealing consolations: it can transform loss—and even the threat of loss—into an artful presence. This session will explore how reading contemporary elegies and engaging in elegiac writing can help us reflect on the lives we’ve led (and will lead). Expect a moving and invigorating session—one that isn’t afraid to laugh, either—as we look at some poems that generate presence even in the absence of loss. We’ll also talk about potential exercises for poets and fiction writers that might yield new writing.

The Three Poisons is a simple and elegant Tibetan Buddhist teaching that identifies three foundational emotions that underlie all others—passion, aggression, and ignorance—much the way the three primary colors combine to make all others. For writers, awareness of the three poisons, which point to the ultimate equality and emptiness of all emotions, can be as profoundly beneficial as Keats’s idea of Negative Capability. Through discussion, examples, and writing exercises, this lecture will seek to convey those benefits.

In this Eleventh Hour, Karen Bender will address a strategy that she found helpful while writing her first novel—finding a short excerpt within it and polishing it to send out. She will discuss the differences between a story and a novel, what to look for in your novel when trying to shape a good excerpt or story, and how to use the story form to help you revise a nebulous, inchoate novel.

What is flash fiction? You’ve read it, perhaps even written it in class: super-short stories, anywhere from a paragraph to a couple of pages in length, sometimes zeroing in on a single moment of experience, sometimes trying to tell a whole life story in a handful of lines. In recent years, flash fiction has moved from the margins to the center, grabbing attention at literary magazines and spawning anthologies. Some of our best contemporary writers do their most challenging work in the form. Nevertheless, flash fiction is hard to define. Look at it one way and it seems to be related to folktale and parable—streamlined forms that know how to cover a lot of ground in few words. Look at it another way and it seems to have its roots in poetry, particularly the prose poem, with its emphasis on the power of language and image to alter the reader’s perceptions in a single magical moment. It’s a hybrid, which makes it great for both fiction writers and poets to explore. In this hour, we will take a look at some exampl

Creative nonfiction is an art of selection, omission, and juxtaposition. Decisions, decisions, decisions… Not only what to leave in and what to take out, but also how to artfully arrange the parts. When just the right elements are juxtaposed, a spark flies up from the space between. In this Eleventh Hour, Carol Spindel will lead a workshop on how to write a personal essay that derives narrative strength and power from juxtaposition. She will get you started with writing exercises and leave you with a template for an essay to be completed later.

In this panel discussion Pettit, Leidner, McDonnell, and Stone will discuss their recent poetry, fiction, and comic publications in conjunction with specific and intimate outside influences, inspirations, imitations, and inquiries. They will present examples of the ideas, authors, forms, and practices which helped them generate their own most recent work, as well as discuss how writers might discover creative motivation in the world around them. Participants will leave with a list of recommended art, literature, music, film, and other imagination-sparking influences. Emily Pettit is the author of Goat in the Snow, a book of poetry, and the editor of notnostrums and Factory Hollow Press, as well as the publisher of jubilat. She teaches poetry workshops at Flying Object in Hadley, Massachusetts. Mark Leidner is the author of Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me, a book of poetry, and The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover, a book of aphorisms. Madeline McDonnell is the author of a tiny collection of short sto

In this Eleventh Hour, Anjali Sachdeva will discuss the effect that getting out into the world and participating can have on your writing. This type of experiential preparation can take different forms—conducting interviews or on-site research, participating in an activity that one will later write about (or that characters take part in during a pivotal scene), or more meditative forms of writing in a natural setting. She will discuss the ways in which these practices can influence and enrich a writer’s work and how she has used them in the past (for her own work and for students). Anjali will also provide examples of specific exercises for participants to try on their own. Anjali Sachdeva is Director of Online Education at Creative Nonfiction and teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

Risk taking, risk evaluation, risk avoidance are all leaned up against when one decides to become a writer and decides how to write what one writes. We hear writers say to one another all the time: how did you get away with that?! Or, I can’t believe you got away with that! We admire how writers “get away” with things in writing. Why is this? What attracts us to this? Obviously, at least partly, because in that expression is implicitly also unsaid: Hmmmmm, I don’t know if I could have let myself do that. Courage, recklessness, intention, all big things writers concern themselves with on a word-by-word basis. We will also expand our conversation into areas that involve Chance, Chance Operations, Generative Procedures, Erasure, Treated Texts, Ouilipian and other contingent constraints and why these are experiencing a renewed popularity. We will also talk about issues of agency and accountability.

In this Writing University podcast, Marcos M. Villatoro discusses the advantages of writing without waiting for the elusive “muse” to strike. Villatoro claims that inspiration springs from a writer’s own work ethic, the physical act of writing.

No one writes who hasn't read, and we all know, at least vaguely, that reading as a writer is a distinctive as well as essential part of the writing life. This Elevenses tries to sort out some of the very different, even contradictory things that are involved in reading as a writer.

In this podcast, poet Katie Ford examines the usefulness of employing the “ghosts” of classical forms in crafting contemporary poetry. Ford advises writers to look to the sonnet and listen for the “inherent music” of popular and tested literary technologies.

In this podcast, Lon Otto leads a discussion on how to avoid “literary thin ice”- the insecurities resulting from insufficient originality, tension or authority in a work.

Tim Bascom, using only lines and circles and an array of strange doodles, will attempt to describe the amazing structural options available within the genre of creative nonfiction. No, he won't work blindfolded. However, he will attempt to be entertaining, and perhaps even a bit enlightening. If you like thinking in pictures, not just words, this may be a blessed break from all the verbiage of the week!

Through what alchemy do writers take lived life and transform it into art? We all have stories to tell, something from our own life or the life of a loved one, which we believe would make a great short story or novel. All too often, however, when we try to write it down, it’s reduced to an anecdote which lies there on the page, lifeless as an empty glass. In this Elevenses, using failed and successful attempts from his own career, Eric Goodman will discuss techniques for breathing life into life as it becomes art.

In her presentation, "Yikes! Elysium: Writing About Happiness," Christine Hemp tackles what she describes as a necessary tension between "sunlight" and "the underworld" in fiction and nonfiction writing. Hemp examines how mundane objects such as puzzle p

Marc Nieson proposes the free-writing exercise as a disciplined process of seizing inspiration and later tackling revision. Nieson talks about how to reconcile the writer's often opposing mindsets of creator and editor, the journey of refining the "

David Hamilton shares his thirty years of experience as editor of The Iowa Review, characterizing the unique world of literary magazines as "ephemeral" and "fugitive." Hamilton compares the mechanics of literary reviews, from local publications to l