Last Writes

If this week had a theme, it would be revision.  Lectures, workshops, and meetings with professors have focused primarily on the essential process of editing and rewriting.  On Monday, I attended a reading by author Elias Khoury (White Masks, Little Mountain), who avowed that the end of a narrative or character is where the story [...]

Read Full Post »

Women in Love

The Department of English and Comparative Literature at Chapman University is pleased to offer the graduate course Women in Love and Other Emotional States in Fiction and Film June 1 through July 6, 2010.  In this course, students will explore the significant themes and movements in comparative literature with an emphasis on how male and [...]

Read Full Post »

Literary Forum – Elias Khoury

The John Fowles Center for Creative Writing at Chapman University concludes its 13th Annual Literary Reading Series on Monday, April 26.  Guest author Elias Khoury will be reading from his novel Little Mountain (1989), an impassioned and corrosive prose poem about Beirut, civil war, and fractured identity.  Khoury is the author of eleven novels, including [...]

Read Full Post »

The Depth of Despair

In honor of the Russian-American novelist and short story writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was born on this day in 1899 in St. Petersburg, I present my favorite quotes from his 1936 novel Despair.  The novel was translated into English in 1937.  A second translation was released in 1965.  Visit my Doubles page to read more [...]

Read Full Post »

The Essay

“The world always looks straight ahead; as for me, I turn my gaze inward.  I fix it there and keep it busy.  Everyone looks in front of him; as for me, I look inside of me; I have no business but with myself; I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself.  [...]

Read Full Post »

MFA Confidential

Chapman MFA peers and fellow literary bloggers take note: Writer’s Digest is now accepting submissions to its second annual MFA Confidential contest.  All students enrolled in a graduate writing program for the 2010-2011 school year are eligible to be Writer’s Digest’s next student blogger!   The winner will represent the writing student community, interact with fellow [...]

Read Full Post »

Literary Forum – Amir Gutfreund

The 2010 John Fowles Literary Forum at Chapman University is pleased to present guest author Amir Gutfreund on Monday, April 19.  Gutfreund will be reading from his novel, Our Holocaust (2006), which was written in Hebrew by the son of Holocaust survivors and translated into English by Jessica Cohen.  Gutfreund was born in Haifa in 1963 [...]

Read Full Post »

What is the Word

“How all becomes clear and simple when one opens an eye on the within, having of course previously exposed it to the without, in order to benefit by the contrast.” ~ Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1954)  Samuel Barclay Beckett was born on this day in 1906 in Foxrock, Dublin, Ireland.  He was an avant-garde novelist, poet, [...]

Read Full Post »

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, on Wednesday, April 14.  Laura Fauteux will give the final lecture of the series, “Adulterous Fidelity: Mary Robinson and The Natural Daughter.”  Fauteux [...]

Read Full Post »

Literary Forum – Alex Epstein

The 2010 John Fowles Literary Forum at Chapman University is pleased to present guest author Alex Epstein on Monday, April 12.  Epstein will be reading from his newly released collection of epigrammatic tales, miniature love stories, and mythological parables in Blue Has No South.      Epstein was born in St. Petersburg, Russia (then Leningrad), [...]

Read Full Post »