S155.
What Exactly Do You Do?: Jobs as Guides into Our Characters' Worlds
Saturday, February 10, 2024
10:35 am to 11:50 am
In Other People's Trades, Primo Levi describes his "vagabond and dilettantish curiosity" about jobs other than his own. This panel features writers who have thought deeply about what their characters do for work—at times fulfilling, at times dangerous, occasionally invented, and usually calling for arcane knowledge, skills, and habits of mind. From sponge diver to film professor, physicist to umbrologist, our characters' professions afford us uncanny access into their inner and outer worlds.
Participants
Tim Horvath is the author of Understories, which won the New Hampshire Literary Award, and Circulation. His stories appear in Conjunctions, AGNI, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He is a visiting assistant professor in the Stony Brook MFA in writing and literature and an editor at Conjunctions.
Rebecca Makkai's fifth book, I Have Some Questions for You, was published in 2023. Her novel The Great Believers was a finalist for both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award; it won the LA Times Book Prize, the Carnegie Medal, and the Stonewall Award. She is artistic director of StoryStudio Chicago.
Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the national bestselling novel, How High We go in the Dark, and the story collection, Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone. He teaches creative writing at St. Olaf College and in the Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency MFA program.
Joy Baglio's fiction appears in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, Bread Loaf, The Elizabeth George Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center and is the founder of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop.
