Looking around my apartment, there are three separate stacks of books, all with more than five books themselves, waiting for me to read them. There is also a Kindle loaded up with yummy novels, and across the street there is a library chalk-full of books I want to read (and across the other street there … Continue reading »
Every winter quarter, the seniors and writing faculty give readings of their most recent opuses* to the general public at Northwestern. This past Tuesday was the inaugural event, and, along with several wonderful student readings, Brian Bouldrey was the faculty reader. In the past, faculty members have read excerpts from published novels, essays, and poetry collections. … Continue reading »
In the October issue of Writer’s Digest, there is an article on an MFA program that teaches genre fiction as well as literary fiction. It is written by a professor of the program, and in it he makes a point that I think is very true; he says that somewhere in the birth of the … Continue reading »
In my “Art of Fiction” class, we begin with a student presentation on an element of fiction and then proceed to workshops. Yesterday, the presentation was on plot. In the handout, the presenters made a distinction between an “entertainment story” and a “serious story”, saying that the former was genre stories and mass-trade paperbacks and … Continue reading »
