Announcement:
ALEX KOTLOWITZ is the CWA Writer in Residence for Winter Quarter 2010. He is the award-winning author of There Are No Children Here, The Other Side of the River, and Never a City So Real. Contributor to The New York Times Magazine and public radio’s This American Life, Alex Kotlowitz is renowned for his narratives of particular individuals whose concrete life experiences illuminate broad aspects of our nation’s social and political landscape.
His course will--through both reading and writing--explore the art of what is often called literary journalism, narrative nonfiction, or what John McPhee calls "the literature of fact." The best of nonfiction narrative wields a fierce power, poking and prodding our preconceptions of the world, pushing us to look at ourselves and others through a different prism. What makes for a compelling story? (What tools might we borrow from fiction?) Why employ the use of narrative? How does it help form our view of people and events? He'll explore the craft of reporting, and research which borrows from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, history and sociology--and work with rigor and discipline on the art of good writing.
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Writers in Residence
CHRIS ABANI is the Fall Quarter 2009 Visiting Writer in Residence teaching Writing 301: The Art of Fiction.
A native of Nigeria, Abani is the author of The Virgin of Flames, GraceLand, Masters of the Board and Becoming Abigail, and four collections of poetry. He has received 2009 Guggenheim in Fiction, the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN Hemingway Book Prize.
Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and editor of McSweeney's magazine, said, "If you want to get at the molten heart of contemporary fiction, Abani is the starting point."
