S151.
Unlearning What You Learned Just Now: Writing Strategies After Your First Book
Saturday, February 10, 2024
10:35 am to 11:50 am
We want to believe that writing is cumulative—that we benefit from habit and repetition—and it’s true, the more we write, the more we know about writing. But what works on one project might not translate to the next. Much of the work we need to do is unlearning, a willingness to go back to not knowing, so we can explore the possibilities of not being fully sure of ourselves. In this panel, four novelists discuss their unlearning and what they left behind as they embarked on new projects.
Participants
Juan Martinez is an associate professor at Northwestern University. Best Worst American, his story collection, was released in 2017. His novel Extended Stay was published in 2023. His work has appeared in Huizache, Glimmer Train, McSweeney's, Ecotone, Selected Shorts, and elsewhere.
Julie Iromuanya is the author of Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for Debut Fiction. She teaches at the University of Chicago.
Jimin Han is the author of the forthcoming novel The Apology and A Small Revolution. She teaches at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and Pace University.
Theodore Wheeler is the author of four books, most recently The War Begins in Paris (Little, Brown & Co., 2023). He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Nebraska Arts Council, and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany, and teaches creative writing at Creighton University.
