The Writing University Podcast

Giving a piece of writing a title is a proper and necessary act—otherwise we’d have, “Untitled,” by Homer, not to be confused with Leo Tolstoy’s great work, “Untitled.” Yet titling is not generally spoken of at any length or depth. Naming anything—a book, a boat, a racehorse, or a child—is at once a craft and an art. There are spectacular titles, serviceable titles, and failed titles; but beyond t...

Lord Byron said, "We of the craft are all crazy." Maybe, maybe not. This talk will examine the forces that influence what we write, why we write, when we write, and where we write. Drugs, drink, depression, joy, compulsion, imagination, dreams, secrets, dollars—we'll cover the bitter and the sweet aspects of the act of creation. Caution: Gordon Mennenga is a writer not a doctor.

Beneath our writing is a deep sense of self that informs the way we organize experience and shape meaning. Autobiographical writing heightens our awareness of life's patterns and themes, concepts that in turn feed fiction, creative nonfiction, essay, and poetry. This discussion will draw on contemporary thinking in narrative psychology and narrative theory, as well as models from literature, in th...

Much of my favorite work to read and to teach can be considered “resistant narratives”—work that responds to and rewrites the narratives we have received from a culture that often wishes to reduce and limit our very souls. To become an artist is to write oneself back into being. A book can be a place where the individual remakes the world. In this talk, we will consider writing as political resist...

Talent is important in creative writing, but resilience is critical. Writing is a lonely endeavor with much rejection. Even worse, our projects are often so long-term that they require the staying power of a marathon runner. So how do we develop that sort of endurance—that stubborn persistence? Tim Bascom will discuss tried-and-true habits from practicing writers who have refused to quit.

This lecture will consider the act of naming. How do we choose the names we give to the characters and figures in our stories and poems? How does a name give a character charge, or mark it, or erase it, or illuminate it? How can a name be used as a veil or a cape? An echo or a halo? What are the joys and pitfalls of using the names of the living and the dead inside acts of the imagination?

The best essays, according to John D’Agata, Director of the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, are a “mind on a page.” According to Bernard Cooper, they magnify “some small aspect of what it means to be human.” But what does this mean, exactly? It means the best essayists harness a very particular and personal truth to speak to larger experience. Amy Butcher shares how a New York Tim...

We often think of writing as something we’ll really get to do later, when life slows down and we have more time to devote to it. Writing retreats, those programs or places that offer endless space to write and think, couldn’t be nicer. But we don’t have to wait for an official writing retreat to make a peaceful opening for writing in our daily lives. Not only that, we can use writing itself as a w...

This lecture will consider what is at the heart of critique and discuss the relationship between the workshop and places of worship, confessional boxes, crying rooms, hospitals, wombs, therapist offices, museums, and trash cans. When the writer brings her stories and poems into workshop, should she disappear? Replace her body with the page? And why do we bring our poems and stories into workshop a...

In this Eleventh Hour, poet Michael Morse will discuss how a work of writing can inhabit its contemporary situation by addressing a distant practitioner or piece—as an inspiration, a model, or even a foil. We’ll look at and discuss some model poems and engage in an invigorating circuit of generative exercises suitable for writers of any genre.

Readers and writers often refer to novels in a binary way. They think of them as being either commercial (popular) or literary (artful). It’s a false dichotomy that sets you up to feel defensive, no matter what you write. It fails to recognize the extreme (and exciting) diversity in contemporary writing. And it underestimates readers. Quality of writing and quality of story make magic when they ar...