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 From July 15
through 27, 2008, the University of the South will host the nineteenth session of the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Supported by the Walter E. Dakin Memorial Fund established through the estate of the late Tennessee Williams, the Conference will gather a distinguished faculty to provide instruction and criticism through workshops and craft lectures in fiction, poetry, and playwriting. The faculty will include fiction writers John Casey, Tony Earley, Randall Kenan, Margot Livesey, Jill McCorkle, Erin McGraw, Tim O'Brien, and Christine Schutt; and poets Daniel Anderson, Claudia Emerson, Andrew Hudgins, Mark Jarman, Brad Leithauser, Mary Jo Salter, Mark Strand, and Greg Williamson. Romulus Linney and Arlene Hutton will work with playwriting participants. In addition, a group of distinguished writers, critics, agents, and visitors will take part. Those who will discuss writing from the point of view of editing or publishing are David Barber (Atlantic Monthly), Georges and Anne Borchardt (Georges Borchardt Literary Agency), George Core (Sewane Review), Gary Fisketjon (Alfred A. Knopf), Mary Flinn (Blackbird, New Virginia Review), Gail Hochman (Brandt & Hochman Literary Agency), John Irwin (Johns Hopkins University Press), David Lynn (Kenyon Review), Speer Morgan (Missouri Review), Kathy Pories (Algonquin Press), Jane Rosenman (Houghton Mifflin), Elisabeth Schmitz (Grove/Atlantic), Don Share (Poetry), and Robert Wilson (American Scholar). The Dramatists Guild's Gary Garrison, executive director of creative affairs, will visit to meet with playwrights, as will Paul Walsh, artistic director of the New Harmony Project. We also welcome literary agents Michelle Brower (Wendy Sherman Associates) and Amy Hughes (McCormick & Williams). Poets Leigh Anne Couch, Charles Martin, Wyatt Prunty, and Nigel Thompson will give readings, as will fiction writer Richard Bausch; Charles Martin and Nigel Thompson will lead a short workshop on translating poetry.
The Conference will offer its customary Walter E. Dakin Fellowships and Tennessee Williams Scholarships, as well as awards in memory of Stanley Elkin, Donald Justice, Howard Nemerov, Father William Ralston, Peter Taylor, Mona Van Duyn, and John N. Wall. Additional scholarships have been made possible by Georges and Anne Borchardt and Gail Hochman. Each participant—whether contributor, scholar, or fellow—receives financial support. |
Sewanee Writers
The Man Who Sees Everything Twice This Boy's Life Negotiating With Loss Flesh and Blood
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Greg Williamson has double vision. At least his poems do. His second book, Errors in the Script, is full of dualities, puns, intentional contradictions, and multiple views of objects, people, and life.
A few years ago Tony Earley got an idea for a book. It was a crazy idea, really. At the end of the twentieth century, Earley wanted to write a novel without irony. No postmodern angst. No disjointed narrative.
Margot Livesey has no memories of her mother, Eva, who died when Livesey was two-and-a-half-years old. But she did inherit stories, tales of Eva's encounters with the supernatural, that inspired Livesey to write her fourth novel, Eva Moves the Furniture.
In 1993, playwright Romulus Linney first read A Lesson Before Dying, a powerful novel by his friend Ernest Gaines. "I told Ernest that I wanted to adapt it for the theater," Linney said.