The Gift of The Magus

English novelist and essayist John Robert Fowles was born on this day in 1926 in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, England.  He attended New College, Oxford, where he studied French, German, and existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. It was there that Fowles first considered life as a writer.  In the 1950s, Fowles began writing his first novel, [...]

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Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle

In a recent Archetype post (“Word Play,” February 19), I wrote about Oulipo, short for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, which, roughly translated, means “workshop of potential literature.”  The objective of Oulipian writers is to create works under self-imposed constraints that challenge literary structure and expand linguistic territories.  An example of Oulipo is the constraint N+7, which requires [...]

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Happy Birthday, Flannery!

“Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” ~ Flannery O’Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964)

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Cartwheels Under the Arch

Last night I returned from St. Louis, where I spent the week attending the 2010 Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society Convention with nine other Chapman MA/MFA students who were invited to present original work and critical essays.  As is typical when I travel, the week was replete with discovery – of a new [...]

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Literary Forum – Micheline Aharonian Marcom

The 2010 John Fowles Literary Forum at Chapman University presents guest author Micheline Aharonian Marcom on Monday, March 22.  Marcom will be reading from her novel The Mirror in the Well, an explicit tale of a sexually charged and emotionally devastating affair between a married, successful woman and a foreign carpenter.    Marcom’s first novel, Three Apples [...]

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Tin House Summer Writers Workshop

The Tin House Summer Writers Workshop is a weeklong intensive series of workshops, seminars, panels, and readings led by the editors of Tin House magazine and Tin House Book and their guests, all of whom are prominent contemporary American writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.  The program combines morning workshops with afternoon craft seminars and [...]

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The Twofold Vibration

Touted as ribald farce, history, and experimental science fiction and written in a protracted, meandering style that disregards completely any consideration for punctuation, capitalization, and the like, Raymond Federman’s novel The Twofold Vibration was, from the onset, not my cup of literary tea.  I was therefore surprised to be scrambling for a pen to mark a line that [...]

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Literary Forum – Willis Barnstone

As part of the 2010 John Fowles Literary Forum at Chapman University, American poet, memoirist, and translator Willis Barnstone will be reading from his books Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho and We Jews and Blacks, a memoir about the politics of racial, religious, and ethnic identity, on March 8.  Barnstone is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Indiana University.  He [...]

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Women in Literature

The Alpha Zeta Iota Chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society proudly continues its lecture series Women in Literature, featuring Emily Griesinger, Austin Carty, Rei Magosaki, and Laura Fauteux. Austin Carty is a highly sought after inspirational speaker and travels the country addressing audiences both young and old, Christian and secular.  His [...]

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Poems of Sappho

In a deliberate effort to respond to Sappho’s lyrics without a full awareness of time and place or authorial perspective, I read the collection of poems and fragments in Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho before reading Willis Barnstone’s revealing introduction about the life and epoch of the ancient Greek poet.  My first readings of “Prayer to [...]

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