R319. Endings for the End Times?

Portland Ballroom 255, Oregon Convention Center, Level 2
Thursday, March 28, 2019
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm

 

As we reach the concluding lines of our own works, current ailments in the body politic may bend us toward chaos and despair. At the same time, ever-present narrative and commercial pressures may drive us toward neatly resolved, even uplifting, endings. How to craft final notes that imply light and dark, open and closed, emotional and intellectual complexity? We discuss struggles and strategies for endings that feel satisfying for readers, and yet true to the work, the moment, ourselves.


Participants

Moderator:

Deborah A. Lott is the author of In Session and Don't Go Crazy without Me: Story of an Anxious Girlhood. Her work has been published most recently in the Rumpus, ROAR, StoryQuarterly, the nervous breakdown, and other places.

Paul Lisicky is the author of five books including The Narrow Door, Unbuilt Projects, and The Burning House. A 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, he is an Associate Professor in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden and serves on the Writing Committee of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Jean Guerrero is the author of CRUX: A Cross-Border Memoir, forthcoming from One World in July 2018. She won the PEN/FUSION Emerging Writers award. She covers immigration for KPBS, the NPR and PBS affiliate in San Diego. She was a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Mexico City.

Chelsey Clammer is the author of BodyHome and Circadian, winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Nonfiction Manuscript Award. Her work as appeared in Salon, Brevity, The Rumpus, Hobart, The Normal School, and many others. She's a freelance editor and an instructor with Women on Writing.

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Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center