December 2009 Cover Image

Poetry & Ethics: Writing About Others

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Natasha Sajé
The effect of literature on its readers is never easy to trace. Is the representation of evil itself evil, or can the representation create an understanding of evil and thus an aversion to it? The debate is as old as Plato and Aristotle...

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Out of the Margins: The Expanding Role of Creative Writing in Today's College Curriculum

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Chad Davidson & Gregory Fraser
These types of "interdisciplinary" productions reinforce the notion that practicing writers embrace rather than ignore other fields of study. And a college campus provides an excellent place to facilitate connections and strengthen the imagination.
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Where the Fire Is: An Interview with Colum McCann

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Andrew Scott
Colum McCann is the author of two collections of short stories and five novels, including This Side of Brightness and Dancer, both of which were international bestsellers. His fiction has been published in twenty-six languages, and appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, GQ, and elsewhere, and he has written for numerous newspapers around the world.
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Vikings & Yellow Submarines: On Avant-Garde Formalism

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Ravi Shankar
I'd like to begin the exploration of form and chaos by isolating a few of the terms that Stravinsky uses-constraint, arbitrariness, and precision of execution-as those terms go a long way toward describing the situation of an "avant-garde formalism," a phrase that for all intents and purposes may be read as an oxymoron in connotation yet that accurately marks some part of a poetics that has migrated from the peripheries of contemporary poetry further into the center.
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The Legacy of Anton Chekhov: What it Means to Say "Chekhovian" & Why His Stories Still Serve as a Blueprint for the Stories We Write Now

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Frederick Reiken
His technical innovations of the late 1800s continue, unbeknownst to many, to be the model for our conventional character-driven story. And because many writers remain unaware of this, there is sometimes a problematic naivete, both with regard to the accidental exaggeration of his technique and with ungainly attempts to break away from it.
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Stealing Third: An Interview with E. Ethelbert Miller

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Shonda Buchanan
Writing is physical. You've got to really sit there and keep your body going, and if you're not disciplined, it doesn't happen. Writing isn't easy. Re-writing isn't easy.
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The Metamorphosis of the Nature Writer: The Movement of American Nature Writing From Pastoral to Environmental

Lori Litchman
Pollan is steadfast in his assertion that Americans need to eat less industrial food, and that assertion becomes his mantra throughout his book. He also ascertains that consuming an industrial diet will not only continue to threaten the health of humans but the ultimate health of the planet.
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An Interview with Diane Johnson

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David Collins
I'm still in many ways the girl who was born and raised in Moline.
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