Author: D. A. Hosek
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Beautiful Sentences
It seems as though there might be some place in the world they could have been left alone. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky.
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Residency day 7
We began with a fiction workshop on revision from Corinna Vallianatos. She began with her top ten on revision, with the #1 position comprised of suggestions from the class: 10. Put your classmates’ response letters away. Read them, but don’t keep them handy. 9. Be impatient. Be impatient with your own preciousness. Revision is like…
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Residency day 6
Our morning seminar was Jason Ockert on writing idiosyncratic characters. How does one go about moving a reader? Balance between writing familiar and distinctive. That which is relatable and that which is somehow unfamiliar. Who cares about idiosyncratic characters? For Ockert it’s rudimentary. He has a terrible memory: the great thing about literature is the stuff…
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Residency day 5
Another full day. It began with Stefan Kiesbye giving a seminar looking at blurred boundaries between fiction and CNF. I was reminded of James Tadd Adcox saying that, to him, CNF was just fiction where the protagonist had the author’s name. Kiesbye looked a number of works, talking about the controversy around the publication of…
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Residency day 4
The reading/writing day of the residency. I got a fair amount of work done, although there’s always more to write. Our workshop time was spent looking closely at “Paper Lantern” by Stuart Dybek (which is finally coming out in a Dybek collection in June) and “Differently” by Alice Munro. Our lone seminar of the day…
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Residency day 3
We began the day with a seminar on revision with Jennifer Vanderbes. There were some nice resonances between what she was saying about specificity and yesterday’s fiction genre workshop. Today was my day to be workshopped, which gave me some excellent feedback on my first chapter of the novel. I’m inclined to do a complete…
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Residency day 2
The day began with a seminar from Erika Meitner and Mary Biddinger on literary taboos. Between the reading that was assigned beforehand and the handout for the seminar there was a lot of food for thought. One student was a bit concerned about “earnest Christianity” being among the taboos so I directed him to Robert…
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Residency day 1
So today (and yesterday) turned out to be quite the odyssey. The original plan was to take a 7.25p flight from Midway to Tampa, arriving at 10.50p. After a lot of delay, the flight was canceled. At 2a. I was able to get a seat on an early flight to Orlando (which was then delayed for…
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Beautiful sentences
And sometimes the night wind nudged his feet so that they struck the circle of his priestly garment like dumb clappers in a deaf-and-dumb bell; they seemed to be tolling without evoking a sound. Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March