R123. Cheating on Poetry: On Writing Nonfiction Too

C123, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1
Thursday, March 28, 2019
9:00 am to 10:15 am

 

In an interview about micro-memoirs, Beth Ann Fennelly revealed she had found herself “cheating on poetry” by having “a love affair with the sentence.” Here, writers who studied poetry discuss what it means to work in this second genre, with attention to opportunities, challenges, conflicts, and intersections. Discussion includes focus on craft and form, line and/versus sentence, literary influences, MFA program limitations, and affinity across genres that can lead poets to creative nonfiction.


Participants

Moderator:

Anna Leahy's publications include the nonfiction books Tumor, Conversing with Cancer, and Generation Space; the poetry books Aperture and Constituents of Matter; and the pedagogy book What We Talk about When We Talk about Creative Writing. She teaches at Chapman University and edits TAB.

Beth Ann Fennelly, poet laureate of Mississippi, teaches at the University of Mississippi. Winner of a Pushcart, an NEA, a Fulbright, and a USA Artist Grant, she's published six books. Her newest, Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, was an AJC Best Book of 2017 and an Goodreaders' favorite.

Paisley Rekdal is the author, most recently, of The Broken Country and Imaginary Vessels. Her forthcoming book of poetry is Nightingale. A Guggenheim fellow and Utah's poet laureate, she teaches at the University of Utah, where she edits the web archive project Mapping Salt Lake City.

Lisa Ko is the Managing Director of Anastamos. She holds an MA in English at Chapman University and is a graduate assistant for Chapman and a mentor coordinator for The Chapman University/Orange High Literacies Partnership. She holds a BA English and BA French from UC Irvine and is pursuing an MFA.

Cori A. Winrock’s manuscript, Little Envelope of Earth Conditions, is forthcoming from Alice James Books. Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Best New Poets, West Branch, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. Winrock is a PhD candidate at the University of Utah where she is poetry editor of Quarterly West.

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