With sessions beginning this month, “The Dzanc Sessions are designed for writers who are ready to amplify, polish, and advance their writing. An eclectic platform of craft-based workshops are offered in a series of online sessions throughout the year, with specializations in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenwriting.” Signing up earns you a free print book or access to their eBook club.
Dzanc Sessions
True South
Amidst all the controversy surrounding Go Set a Watchman, one question that gets left out is how realistic, exactly, the book is in its depiction of its setting. At Salon, Scott Timberg sits down with Professor Angela Thorburg, who makes a case that regardless of its literary qualities, Watchman is “a very accurate perspective of what’s going on here in the South.”
Iowa’s Free Online Poetry Workshop
A new MOOC from the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program is scheduled to begin on June 28. “How Writers Write Poetry” is free and open to the public, and it will feature craft talks from poets such as Robert Hass and Kwame Dawes. A fiction-writing course is also scheduled for September. (Related: Read how several Iowa MFA students describe a typical day in the program.)
Read/Write NY
Today, stuff yourself on envy and/or nostalgia for the NYC literary life. First, whet your appetite on the New Yorker's gorgeous illustrations of notable bookstores, including one "the size of a luxurious Park Avenue closet." Continue to a responsible main course essay on Choire Sicha, The Awl, and the Brooklyn loft building where it was founded and resides: a place that is "pleasant" but "a little dumpy, too, because that's sort of our MO." For dessert, savor Erin Loeb's personal essay on leaving New York, and finish with a fittingly varied cheese course of other writers also saying goodbye.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Congratulations to Millions contributor Edan Lepucki who received the 2009 James D. Phelan Award for her novel manuscript, Days of Insignificance and Evil. The award is given by the Intersection for the Arts and sponsored by the San Francisco Foundation. She'll be reading, along with Page McBee and Youmna Chlala, at the Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco on Monday, November 16th at 7:30.
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Letters from the Frontier
Recommended Reading: The New Republic on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s new collection of letters and the end of the frontier. “Wilder was disillusioned by a country that no longer seemed to value the achievements of her generation.”
Planning for the End
"If Earth overheats and crops and fuel become scarce, guess what? I know good bartering supplies include tampons, mercury fillings, eyeglasses. One particularly anxious day I read instructions on how to cook on my woodstove—so in the early days of environmental apocalypse and culture collapse, my family will enjoy bygone potatoes roasted over hot coals and underdone loaves of bread.” Year in Reading alumna Megan Mayhew Bergman prepares herself for the apocalypse.
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Who Wrote It First
Nabokov fans, brace yourselves! Nabokov scholar Michael Maar accuses the author of stealing the premise of Lolita from another writer. Pair with this Millions essay about designing the cover of the book.
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Feeling Very Still
Can you hear me, Major Tom? The world lost one of the good ones today in David Bowie; celebrate his enormous contributions to art as we know it and take a look at this list of Bowie's 100 essential books which includes everyone from Camille Paglia to Anthony Burgess. Bonus: here's a link to Bowie singing "Changes" in what became his final live performance.
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