EarthGoat and Babies Are Fireproof, two blogs run by Iowa Writers’ Workshop grads, have been studiously discussing — and interviewing! — the finalists for outgoing director Frank Conroy’s position.
I’m probably missing some posts, but here’s what I’ve found:
-A Q & A with Lan Samantha Chang (” I’d like to raise money to be used to guarantee free tuition …”)
-A summary of Chang’s talk on craft (“Sam’s talk was on ‘breakout sections’ of novels – i.e., those sections where the novel breaks from the unities of form that short stories require…”)
-A summary of Jim Shepard’s talk on craft (“He wondered what pulls together the sprawl of Denis Johnson’s ‘Emergency.’ One thing is the tyranny of chronology.”)
-A Q & A with Ben Marcus (“You have to be able to critique without shutting down the writer’s ambitions.”)
-A summary of Marcus’s trial workshop (“Throughout this discussion, BM was amusingly self-deprecating.”)
-A Q & A with Richard Bausch (“Tell them to contact my students at George Mason University. They’ll tell you every class is actually a six-hour class. We meet for three hours and then we go to a bar for another three.”)
-A summary of Bausch’s trial workshop (“I don’t teach writing. I teach patience.”)
(What I really want to hear, though, is Connie’s thoughts…)