WRITING MATTERS Winter 2008 Vol
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See NU STUDY MATRIX for a complete listing of ALL writing courses offered at NU www.northwestern.edu/writing-arts/study.html THE NEWSLETTER OF NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY’S CENTER FOR THE WRITING ARTS VOL. 8WRITING NO. 2 MATTERSWinter 2008 SPECIAL EVENTS ON CAMPUS A Public Conversation: Radio Reading and Discussion of Troubadour Diaries--How Ordinary Peoples’ Poems from the South of France with Stories Become Extraordinary, with William Paden and Frances Freeman Alex Kotlowitz and Joe Richman Paden Tuesday Monday March 4 , 2008 January 28, 2008 5:15-6:15 p.m. 4-6 p.m. University Hall, Hagstrum Room 201 Alex Kotlowitz Harris Hall, Room 108 1881 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL William Paden The poetry of the troubadours was famous Alex Kotlowitz is the Winter Quarter throughout the middle ages, but the difficulty 2008 Visiting Writer in Residence at the and diversity of the original languages have Center for the Writing Arts, teaching the been obstacles to its appreciation by a wider Art of Nonfiction: Telling Stories. He is the audience. This collection presents English award-winning author of There Are No verse translations in contemporary idiom and Children Here, The Other Side of the River, and a highly readable form. Genres include love Never a City So Real. Contributor to The New songs, satires, invectives, pastourelles, debates, York Times Magazine and public radio's This laments, and religious songs. American Life. William D. Paden is a Professor of French and Joe Richman Joe Richman is an award-winning indepen- Italian at Northwestern University, and was dent producer and reporter for public radio, recently named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des and the founder of Radio Diaries. Joe has Palmes Académiques. Frances Freeman Paden also worked on the National Public Radio is a Distinguished Senior Lecturer in The programs All Things Considered, Weekend Writing Program and Gender Studies, at Edition Saturday, Car Talk and Heat. Northwestern University. David Standish Erik Larson, author of Devil in the White Author, freelance writer, Medill School City discusses: Reporting on the Past: The Craft of Nonfiction Monday February 4, 2008 Monday 12:30-1:30 p.m. February 25, 2007 University Hall, Hagstrum Room 201 12 noon- 1p.m. Fisk Hall, Room 111 Hollow Earth: The Long and Standish will read from his book, The best-selling author Erik Larson writes books that weave Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical together multiple plots based on actual events. His best-known Creatures, Advanced Civilizations and Marvelous Machines Below books are Issac's Storm, about Galveston's killer hurricane, and the Earth's Surface. The idea that another world exists below The Devil in The White City, about the architect who built the surface of the Earth has captivated science fiction and Chicago's World's Fair and the serial killer who preyed on fantasy writers since the days of Edgar Allan Poe and Jules women drawn to that city. In his new book, Thunderstruck, Verne. As Standish reveals, the theory has also been promot- Larson dives into the North London Cellar Murder, writing ed by serious scientists, beginning with the eminent Edmond about a notorious crime just prior to World War I. Halley, who theorized that smaller concentric spheres were nested inside the Earth. THE NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTER FOR THE WRITING ARTS NU CENTER FOR THE WRITING ARTS Alex Kotlowitz, Winter Quarter 2008 Visiting Writer in Residence, teaching the Art of Nonfiction: Telling ADVISORY BOARD Stories. MEMBERS Alex Kotlowitz is the award-winning author of There Are No Children Here, The Other Side of the River, and Never a City So 2007/2008 Real. A contributor to The New York Times Magazine and public radio's This American Life, Alex Kotlowitz is renowned for his narratives of particular individuals Reginald Gibbons whose concrete life experiences illumi- Director of the Center for the Writing Arts, nate broad aspects of our nation's social WCAS, English & Classics, and Co-Director of the MA in and political landscape. Creative Writing (SCS) Some of Kotlowitz’s most recent New York Times Magazine Ken Alder WCAS, History pieces include: Leigh Bienen School of Law Jack Doppelt Medill School The cover story, “Our Town” and “Asylum for the World's Steven Fischer Kellogg School of Management Battered Women.” Both can be found at the Center’s website: Doug Foster Medill School Robert Gundlach WCAS, Linguistics & The http://www.northwestern.edu/writing-arts/sites.html Writing Program George Harmon Medill School Some of his radio work (as well as interviews with him) can be Carol Henes Kellogg School of Management found at these two sites: John Keene WCAS, English Mary Kinzie WCAS, English www.wbez.org Dan Lewis School of Education & www.thislife.org Social Policy Sarah Maza WCAS, History Dan McAdams School of Education & Social Policy PLANNING WRITING EVENTS THIS QUARTER? Kathryn Montgomery Feinberg School of Medicine Saul Morson WCAS, Slavic Lang. & Lit. LET US KNOW! James R. O’Laughlin WCAS, Writing Program Frances Paden WCAS, Writing Program Just a reminder that the Center’s biweekly e-mail announce- and Gender Studies ment, NU Writing Event Digest, highlights NU writing events Abe Peck Medill School and reaches students, faculty, and staff via the Center’s John Rudnicki McCormick School of Engineering growing email list. If you know of an upcoming event related Barbara Schwom WCAS, Writing Program to writing, whether it be an author’s visit, departmental Ken Seeskin WCAS, Philosophy program, or even an off-campus event involving NU students Carol Simpson Stern School of Communication, or faculty, please let us know! We will do our best to publicize Performance Studies all writing-related programming. If you would like to receive Charles Whitaker Medill School Patti Wolter Medill School the electronic NU Writing Event Digest, please send an email to: [email protected] or call us at 847-467-4099. WRITING MATTERS Winter 2008 Vol. 8 No.2 Editor: STACY L. OLIVER The Center for the Writing Arts presents a variety of distinguished writers Newsletter of the Northwestern University Center for the from both on and off campus. For future events and an archival listing visit: Writing Arts. Published three times during the school year at www.northwestern.edu/writing-arts/ Northwestern University, 1880 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208. For permission to quote in any publication outside Northwestern University, please contact the Editor. PAGE 2 WRITING MATTERS/WINTER 2008 THE NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTER FOR THE WRITING ARTS started writing in my blue-gray note- though I was not enrolled in it, he Angela Jackson book of poems then as a carryover of had invited me to OBAC, the Excerpt from “Angels and the poems I had written in high Organization of Black American Tricksters: Looking Back at the school or not. I just know that by the Culture Writers’ Workshop, where I Black Arts Movement and spring of freshman year I had might be “judged” by my peers. I remember thinking, “Don Lee and Measuring Its Impact Now,” announced myself as a poet by read- ing a poem in public at an FMO (For them are not my peers. They’re ten lecture given Oct. 16, 2007 at Members Only)--the Black student years older than me.” the symposium on The Black organization--event. That poem Arts Movement in the Broader appeared in the NU yearbook in 1969. I did go to OBAC the third Legacy of the Civil Rights It had been submitted by one of Wednesday of October, 1969. I found FMO’s Central Committee. it the most important appointment I Movement organized by Ed have ever kept with myself. OBAC Roberson, Visiting Writer in The Civil Rights Act was passed in was, in short, an organization of liter- Residence, Center for the 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in ary revolutionaries whose goal was Writing Arts, Fall 2007 1965 and I was in the last generation the creation of a literature true to the to live under American apartheid, de African-American experience, with- jure segregation. The segregation that out the constraints of White critics would follow would be as it had been and audiences breathing down Black I arrived at Northwestern Up North all along--de facto. De necks, asking us to re-invent our real- University’s ivy-covered Willard facto segregation. ity to suit them. “The writers of the Hall in June, 1968. It was three Black Consciousness movement are months after Reverend Doctor I was one of the first large groups of rejecting even those black writers and Martin Luther King, Jr. was mur- African-American students to enter critics who seek to impose upon black dered in Memphis, and the same predominantly White universities. It literature ‘universal’ standards of month that Robert Kennedy was is not that there were that many of us judgment, for universal in the murdered in Los Angeles. entering these zones of historical American critical context is synony- Whiteness and access, it was simply mous with ‘white’ (Negro Digest, Hoyt Northwestern was whiter than more than the one or two who had W. Fuller). For too long Black writers Christmas on a snowy day. I was entered at a time, in days before we had been re-inventing themselves dis- excited by the privilege of being kicked the door in to integration. The honestly to gain acceptance from there; I was overwhelmed by not mood was high in young Black Whites. “From the beginning black only the beauty of the campus but America. Like Lorraine Hansberry writers were discouraged from deal- the presence of so many White we called ourselves “young, gifted, ing honestly with their own experi- people.