Report by Betsy Porritt:
Dan Baum cuts an interesting figure in a straw boater, sleeveless shirt and baggy, fuchsia pink trousers. When he talks, it is with the confidence of a New Yorker reporter with hand gestures to match. He speaks with a warm eloquence and easy precision directly reflected in the clean lines of his [...]
Entries from October 2009
October 19, 2009
Dan Baum 10/14/09: Finding the Right Word
October 16, 2009
Things You’ll Learn at the Angola Prison Rodeo
Reportage by Chris D.
Courtesy of Professor Morris and the generous donors of the Tulane Creative Writing Fund, the Advanced Fiction Workshop (and myself–recent grad/willing driver) had the opportunity to attend the morally ambiguous and spectacularly muddy forty-fifth annual Angola Prison Rodeo. If you are lucky enough to attend this event, you will, as one should on field [...]
October 15, 2009
Personal Essay Symposium 10/03/09: Jonathan Ames
Report by Faine Greenwood:
I never thought I would see a man discussing, ahem, evacuating his bowels in the South of France at an officially Tulane sponsored event. Yet I have: I have seen Jonathan Ames.
Ames, a NYC-based personal essayist, novelist, and screenwriter (among other talents) is a bizarre and neurotic presence, the sort of gentleman [...]
October 15, 2009
Personal Essay Symposium 10/03/09: Chris Rose
Report by Sarah Manthey:
Chris Rose, local newspaperman turned spokesperson for post-Katrina New Orleans, half-read half-performed works from his book 1 Dead in Attic as the third contributor in the symposium on the personal essay. His book is a compilation of articles he published in The Times Picayune.
Rose began as a social columnist for the paper, [...]
October 12, 2009
Personal Essay Symposium 10/03/09: Phillip Lopate
Report by Faine Greenwood:
Phillip Lopate has been a particular delight for me to discover. I’ve got my reasons: I have often been critiqued in the past for providing too much background information in my essays: it is the fetish of a life-long information whore, the kind of person who enjoys being good at Trivial Pursuit. [...]
October 8, 2009
Personal Essay Symposium 10/03/09: Meghan Daum
Report by Sara Tobin:
Writer Meghan Daum opened the “Less-Than-Secret Lives” symposium on the personal essay Saturday Oct. 3 with a reading from her most recent work, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House. The book is a collection of personal essays that explores the concept of “home” in the many places she [...]
October 7, 2009
Less-Than-Secret Lives: Symposium on the Personal Essay 10/03/09
Report by Joey Von Hoven:
The Personal Essay Symposium at Tulane on Saturday, October 3 was an intriguing chance to see, up-close and in sharp comparative relief, four writers’ different styles, positions, personalities, and takes on the personal essay and on writing in general. This revealed some interesting dichotomies, intersections, and comparisons that could have fueled [...]
