The Writing University Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Episode 48: Stephen Lovely—Marathon Training for the Fiction Writer: Conditioning Your Mind and Body to Go the Distance Jun 24, 2014

Show notes

There are innumerable workshops you can take to help you write your first novel or book of stories, workshops in which you’ll focus on developing characters and plot and structure, establishing narrative pace and point of view, refining dialogue. But what about the character of you, the writer doing all that hard work? How will you plot and structure your life? What kind of dialogue will you carry on with yourself during the years you spend writing? What kind of pace will you set? What point of view should you adopt toward your fellow writers? Toward the world of publishing? In this Eleventh Hour lecture, novelist Stephen Lovely, who spent over ten years writing his first novel, Irreplaceable, will focus on a too-often neglected aspect of writing, which is the mental and physical health of The Writer: the brave, battered athlete of language.

Episode 47: Michael Morse -- Rebel With a Clause: The Prose Poem Jun 23, 2014

Show notes

In this Eleventh Hour presentation, poet Michael Morse will discuss the prose poem, a literary hybrid with evocative potential. We’ll look at a brief history of the form, some model examples of writing that blend the lyricism of the poem with the syntax of the sentence, and try our hand at exercises that will yield early drafts of work to take home and develop.

Episode 46: Jim Heynan: “Same Content/Different Form” Jun 19, 2014

Show notes

In this podcast, recorded on 6/19/07 at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival Elevenses novelist and poet Jim Heynen discusses the relationship between content and form. Heynen advises writers to revisit thematic "obsessions" and to attempt "re-exploring the

Episode 45: Hilary Plum -- Approaching Fact in Fiction Jun 10, 2014

Show notes

This lecture will explore recent moments and new possibilities in the age-old relationship between nonfiction and fiction. We’ll discuss contemporary works of fiction built around documentary material: photographs, testimony, reportage. Through an examination of how fiction frames, interacts with, and creates and resolves tension with its documentary sources, we’ll glimpse just what’s happening today at the border where fiction and nonfiction meet.

Episode 44: The Art of Juxtaposition | Carol Spindel Jun 09, 2014

Show notes

Creative nonfiction is an art of selection, omission, and juxtaposition. Decisions, decisions, decisions… Not only what to leave in and what to take out, but also how to artfully arrange the parts. When just the right elements are juxtaposed, a spark flies up from the space between. In this Eleventh Hour, Carol Spindel will lead a workshop on how to write a personal essay that derives narrative strength and power from juxtaposition. She will get you started with writing exercises and leave you with a template for an essay to be completed later.

Episode 43: Stephen Lovely—Marathon Training for the Fiction Writer: Conditioning Your Mind and Body to Go the Distance Jul 25, 2013

Show notes

In this Eleventh Hour lecture, novelist Stephen Lovely will focus on the mental and physical health of The Writer: the brave, battered athlete of language.

Episode 42: Jim Heynen—Write What You Don’t Know About Jul 11, 2013

Show notes

Episode 41: Mary Allen—Working with Time, the Key to Writing Jul 10, 2013

Show notes

One of the biggest challenges, and imperatives, of writing is finding time—making time—to sit down and do it. It’s something like that moment in the movie Field of Dreams, where a mysterious voice says to Kevin Costner, If you build it they will come. Except that in the case of writing, ‘building it’ means not creating a ballpark to attract ghostly baseball giants, but creating a little window of time in which to write. We can’t make the writing come to us, but if we make a space for it in our day, it will inevitably show up. And if we don’t make space for it, writing definitely won’t come. Mary Allen will share her own experiences and struggles with finding time to write, and will pass along the workable solutions she’s arrived at over the years.

Episode 40: Susan Taylor Chehak—Going Graphic: What the Storytelling Secrets of Comics Can Tell Us About Narrative Technique Jul 09, 2013

Show notes

In this Eleventh Hour, Susan Taylor Chehak will use Powerpoint to take a graphic look at comic book storytelling conventions and how they can be applied to your own written narratives. Through examples and discussion, she will explore the magic of words summoning pictures and pictures inspiring words.

Episode 39: Robert Siegel—Haiku for Prose Writers: Exploring the Power of the Image Jul 08, 2013

Show notes

One of the key elements in successful fiction is imagery—the word-pictures that directly transmit what the writer sees. But while writing students get a lot of help with things like plot and structure, imagery often goes unmentioned, in part because it is so hard to talk about how to make better images. Therein lies the value of haiku for prose writers. The short, imagistic form of poetry imported from Japan offers a clear (and very fun) way to practice making images. Over the course of the hour, Robert will lead a workshop in reading and writing haiku. This workshop aims to deepen your understanding of the role of imagery in your own writing, and to enrich your visual imaginations.

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