Visit The Paris Review Interviews for comprehensive talks with authors like Margaret Atwood, Jorge Luis Borges, Raymond Carver, Julio Cortazar, Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami, David Mamet, Vladmir Nabokov, Susan Sontag and more. It's well worth a visit.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
What is a Fiction Writer?
As a writer of both short stories and unfinished novels, I wonder what it is that defines me as someone who creates fiction. Of course, there is the obvious answer that I make up a story. Where a nonfiction writer bases narrative on events that actually happen, fiction writers take liberties. The characters, the events, even the setting can be drawn from the imagination.
In this process fiction is created. I would like to think that fiction is an imitation of life molded from the experiences in our lives in a mimetic fashion, but I feel there may be more to the craft than that. Consider the following quote from How Fiction Works by James Wood.
I think it is this ability to capture the mindset of characters that sets the fiction writer apart from the poet and nonfiction writer. If poetry is considered the purest, most condensed form of language, I would argue that fiction should be the considered the superlative telling of life, not of the author's life, or of those the author witnessed, but of those lives the author is capable of imagining.
As a writer of both short stories and unfinished novels, I wonder what it is that defines me as someone who creates fiction. Of course, there is the obvious answer that I make up a story. Where a nonfiction writer bases narrative on events that actually happen, fiction writers take liberties. The characters, the events, even the setting can be drawn from the imagination.
In this process fiction is created. I would like to think that fiction is an imitation of life molded from the experiences in our lives in a mimetic fashion, but I feel there may be more to the craft than that. Consider the following quote from How Fiction Works by James Wood.
When Robert Browning describes the sound of a bird singing its song twice over, in order to "recapture / The first fine careless rapture," he is being a poet, trying to find the best poetic image; but when Chekhov, in his story "Peasants," says that a bird's cry sounded as if a cow had been locked up in a shed all night, he is being a fiction writer: he is thinking like one of his peasants.Wood implies that it's necessary to inhabit the mind of the characters you create. For a fiction writer, it is not enough to document and comment on the world around you. You must live it. You must think through how a peasant, an expatriate, or a jazz musician would see and describe the world. In this sense, you acquire the diction and perspective of another and create a world that is not true. Some part of the fictive world has to resonate though. There must be something recognizable in fiction with which readers can relate. It is this aspect of recognition that draws readers to experience the life of another, whether the life actually occurred or not.
I think it is this ability to capture the mindset of characters that sets the fiction writer apart from the poet and nonfiction writer. If poetry is considered the purest, most condensed form of language, I would argue that fiction should be the considered the superlative telling of life, not of the author's life, or of those the author witnessed, but of those lives the author is capable of imagining.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Welcome Back, Fiction Writers!
You are SO going to want to know about...
Phoebe's Awesome Winter Fiction & Poetry Contests,
including its first-ever Nonfiction Contest!
Tell everyone you know! Details here.
Phoebe's Awesome Winter Fiction & Poetry Contests,
including its first-ever Nonfiction Contest!
Tell everyone you know! Details here.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Fiction Dinner with Alan on May 23rd
Last fiction dinner for year!
When: May 23rd, 6PM
Where: Alan’s house in DC (we'll send out the address)
Here is our list. If you told me what you're bringing and I don't have it down here, just send me an email and I'll add it. Those of you still deciding, just let me know when you can so we have an idea of the menu.
You know the drill, we'll gather and eat. Then Alan will talk and probably ask us all what we've been reading and if we're revising. (Answers: Ulysses and Of course!)
When: May 23rd, 6PM
Where: Alan’s house in DC (we'll send out the address)
Here is our list. If you told me what you're bringing and I don't have it down here, just send me an email and I'll add it. Those of you still deciding, just let me know when you can so we have an idea of the menu.
You know the drill, we'll gather and eat. Then Alan will talk and probably ask us all what we've been reading and if we're revising. (Answers: Ulysses and Of course!)
| Nicole Lee | gourmet cheese | |
| Jeff Moscaritolo | pies | |
| Jay Patel | ||
| Beckie McGill | wine / pasta salad | |
| Lisa Hill-Corley Norah Vawter | ||
| Sarah Silberman | tomato and cucumber salad | |
| Elizabeth Gutting | ||
| Corey Beasley | ||
| Paul Zaic | slow cooked meat | |
| Ken Isreal | carrot side dish | |
| Bree Spencer | ||
| Kirsten Clodfelter | ||
| Laura Vinti | dessert | |
| Pat Devlin | ||
| Priyanka Champaneri | sparkling cider | |
| Atossa Shafaie | ||
| Sara Flood | ||
| Jennifer Brown | fruit salad | |
| David Tucholski | ||
| Mark Fabiano | fresh vegetables and dip, diet soda | |
| Ben Brown |
| Amber Smith (maybe) | cherry dessert |
Monday, April 19, 2010
Five Alums Win storySouth Selection
The journal storySouth selected three four five stories by GMU MFA alumni for its Notable Stories of 2009 awards: Tara Laskowski, for “Like Everyone Else” in Fiction Weekly; Janet Freeman, for “The Ugliest Drowned Man in the World Washes Ashore Lake Michigan” in PANK; Benjamin Chadwick, for “The Power of Fiction” in Rough Copy; Rion Amilcar Scott, for “Rolling in My Six-Fo’—Daa Daa Daa—With All My Niggas Saying: Swing Down Sweet Chariot Stop and Let Me Riiiide. Hell Yeah.” in Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly; and Scott Garson, for “About Me and My Cousin,” in Matchbook. Congrats all!
Also named was the story “Stranger Things Have Happened,” by Alix Ohlin, one of our visiting writers in fiction this spring (the story appeared in failbetter.com).
Friday, March 26, 2010
Congrats to Jenna Morgan!
Our very own Jenna Morgan has just received an acceptance from Soundings East. Her short story "For Want of Sleep" will be featured in the 2010 edition of the journal. Congrats to Jenna! Keep those stories coming.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
More good news...
Congratulations are in order for Collin Grabarek, who has a story forthcoming both in print and online in the April issue of Crossed Genres. Nice job, Collin!
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