visiting writer series

Brenda Shaughnessy

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Shaughnessy

“That was amazing.”

“She was so helpful.”

“I love her!”

These were some of the comments from Butler poetry MFA students as they left one-on-one meetings with poet Brenda Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy visited the campus last week as a Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writer. In addition to the individual workshops, Shaughnessy held a public poetry reading and a Q & A discussion on writing.

Shaughnessy shared personal details of her struggles in life and writing and candidly answered questions from students. She discussed practical advice, like how to use correlative objects to make readers care about a character or emotion. Stressing the importance of defamiliarization, she explained how staring at a wall in McDonald’s created an image of loneliness.

For most of the discussion, Shaughnessy focused on encouraging young writers. “Writing is like karaoke or dancing. Just do it. Don’t think you have to be really good. Don’t quit if you hit a wrong note,” she said. “Poetry is not about knowing things; it’s about asking things, exploring things, wondering things.”

 

Brenda Shaughnessy

Posted by MS

Shaughnessy

“That was amazing.”

“She was so helpful.”

“I love her!”

These were some of the comments from Butler poetry MFA students as they left one-on-one meetings with poet Brenda Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy visited the campus last week as a Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writer. In addition to the individual workshops, Shaughnessy held a public poetry reading and a Q & A discussion on writing.

Shaughnessy shared personal details of her struggles in life and writing and candidly answered questions from students. She discussed practical advice, like how to use correlative objects to make readers care about a character or emotion. Stressing the importance of defamiliarization, she explained how staring at a wall in McDonald’s created an image of loneliness.

For most of the discussion, Shaughnessy focused on encouraging young writers. “Writing is like karaoke or dancing. Just do it. Don’t think you have to be really good. Don’t quit if you hit a wrong note,” she said. “Poetry is not about knowing things; it’s about asking things, exploring things, wondering things.”

 

Percy Goes 1:1 with Butler MFAs

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image006On his recent visit to Butler University as a Vivian S. Delbrook visiting writer, Benjamin Percy discussed genre writing, read from his new thriller (Dead Lands, a post-apocalyptic reimagining of the Lewis and Clark saga), held a student Q & A, and met with MFA fiction candidates for one-on-one workshops.

Percy was introduced to an audience of Butler students and community fans by MFA student John Eckerd. “He’s a modern Edgar Allen Poe without the weird hair; A Raymond Carver with scarier dreams.”  With a voice like Samuel Jackson, (developed, Percy says, on a diet of beer) Percy discussed the differences between literary fiction and genre fiction. He grew up on genre fiction, but fell in love with literature as a college student. In literary fiction, Percy says, “You create three-dimensional characters you think about years later. You create great lines you can hang on your wall.” In genre fiction, Percy says, “All six cylinders are blazing. You never lose track of what’s most important – what happens next.”

Percy asked himself to write the kind of story he’d fall in love with as a child.  “My childhood can only be described as preapocalyptic,” Percy said. “Falling off the grid has always been an active part of my fantasy life.”

While his story ideas are wildly imaginative, his writing process is as analytical as an accountant’s spreadsheet. He reads a novel he admires at least six times before becoming emotionally detached enough to dissect each chapter into a structure. He works in an old dark room he calls his “nightmare factory.” For at least a year, Percy plots out stories on paper he’s ripped from his children’s art easel. His story map is “like a constellation or a seismograph.” There are bright points and lots of up ticks and down ticks.

IMG_2150Because he is so precise in his own writing process and so willing to share advice, fiction MFA students were eager to meet with him one on one to discuss their work. Percy spent time with students’ work beforehand, covering the pages with notes and considerations. When he met with them one on one, he offered specific advice on the submission, general writing techniques, and writing career tips. Thesis candidate Dave Marsh said, “Percy was excellent 1:1. I am SO glad I made the effort to sign up for one of those workshop slots. I can’t wait to get hold of his craft book [Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction, October, 2016] that will come out later this year.”

VWS: Lev Grossman

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grossmanPhoto credit: Shoot for the Moon!

Thanks to the Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series, Butler students were treated to a discussion, reading, and Q & A with New York Times best-selling writer, Lev Grossman. Before reading a selection from The Magician King, the fantasy writer spent a large amount of time during his public reading discussing literary fantasy, and how he found his voice in the genre. He talked about ideas and inspiration and explained many of his choices in his popular series, The Magicians.

“I always planned on being a literary novelist,” Grossman said. “The Magicians began as thought experiment…. I wanted to see how Hemmingway or Virgina Woolf would describe magic.” Grossman focused on using all five senses to explain magic. He made his hero not such a good guy and his mission unclear.

In the student Q & A the day following his reading, Grossman answered many difficult questions about the unlikable narrator and his many flaws. Grossman admitted it was intentional to create a more real life hero. “I wanted wizards to feel as lost as I did.” Grossman wrote the Magicians while battling depression. “I’d lie in bed, look out the window at all the normal people, and think, ‘Wow. They are magicians.'”

After his reading, Grossman went to the nearby dive bar, the Red Key, where it was rumored Kurt Vonnegut often wrote. Later, it was discovered that was a wild fantasy, and Vonnegut never went there. But now Lev Grossman has!

Roxane Gay

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gayEmpathy and humor dominated Roxane Gay’s recent reading and Q & A at Butler University. Before her public reading, Gay met with Butler students around the fire at the Efroymson Center for Creative Writing. The unfiltered conversation covered everything from Barbie to gun violence, Donald Trump to Doc McStuffins.

The award-winning, multi-genre author encouraged Butler students to be good writers, bad feminists, and empathetic always. She discussed the importance of writing entertaining stories while being aware. Gay writes for popular fashion magazines as often as for literary magazines. She publishes memoirs, novels, and twitter posts. “If you want to make a change, if you want to be heard, you have to take a multi-pronged approach. Not everyone is on twitter,” she said, then admitted, “But a lot of interesting conversations happen around hashtags.”

Her brand of “bad feminism” is allowing women to “care about beauty products and the world at the same time.” It is about having empathy for each other. “Life is hard for everyone, even Oprah. Look, she’s richer than black coffee, but her struggle is real. Not as real as mine, but you do have to have empathy to recognize life is hard. How do we make life less hard for more people?” she said.

The perfect start to the Spring 2016 Vivian S. Delbrook reading series, Gay is a classic example of a writer who makes literary events fun and entertaining. She laughed, challenged students, joked, got real, and always engaged her audiences.