Through examples and exercises, this class will cover the myriad ways to create a sense of place on the page without falling into travel writing. No offense to travel writing. But the point here is to create a vivid setting for your characters without over explaining or over describing. We'll cover a range of writers from John Edgar Wideman to Mavis Gallant to Stuart Dybek to Raymond Chandler to Juan Rulfo to Marilynne Robinson, and bring in some new writers as well including the Rwandan/ Namibian writer Remy Ngamije and Mexico's Fernanda Melchor. Bring your own favorite places, cities, towns, lakes, mountains, and we'll try and give them life on the page.
PETER ORNER is the author of eight books of fiction and non-fiction, including Maggie Brown & Others; Love and Shame and Love; Esther Stories, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award; and Am I Alone Here?, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A new novel, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter, will be out in August from Little Brown. He has edited four volumes of oral history for Voice of Witness and McSweeney's. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, The Believer, and Best American Short Stories and been awarded four Pushcart Prizes. A Guggenheim fellow and recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Orner is chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College. Chicago born and raised, he lives with his family in Norwich, Vermont.
