Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Clarion

All this week I am teaching Clarion West in Seattle. Eighteen students are spending six weeks writing stories, critiquing, and learning from six professional writers, one per week. This year they are Paul Park, me, Margo Lanagan, Minister Faust, L. Timmel duChamp, and Charles Stross. Here we are, hard at work in our classroom, which the rest of the year is part of a sorority house: Each Clarion has its own group personality. This one is affable, well-mannered, dedicated, and determined. Most of them attended my reading last night at the University Bookstore, where I read "Eliot Wrote." The next morning, there we all were back at the big table, improving each other's fiction and producing such memorable statements as:

"But there is no blood in bread."

"I was pleasantly surprised that I understood some of what was going on in this story."

"Being British, I did understand why you just summarized the sex scene."

"I am totally Team Pillow!"

4 comments:

Corinne Duyvis said...

Hi Nancy! Corinne here, testing the comments.

"Affable", are we? I see.

Bryan H. Bell said...

We're not Clarion students, but my wife and I did attend Nancy's reading in the University Bookstore. I'd been meaning to read "Eliot Wrote" since Nancy posted about it here in her blog earlier this month. How nice to enjoy the author herself reading it to me instead! My wife says she teared up a bit at the last line. My favorite line in the story was: "All at once his face sagged from underneath, like a pie crust cooling." What a vivid image!

samrvs2@gmail.com said...

Ms. Kress, I am thrilled to see you on Blogger. You probably don't remember me but several years ago you wrote an article for Writer's Digest called "Brother Can You Spare Some Information," which was the product of a wannabe writer fan letter than I had sent to you. That article has been invaluable to me. I am still writing and still loving it. Few writers have taught me more than you have through your articles and books. I just wanted to say thanks.

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