14 – 21 July 2012: Writing seminar with Donna Leon and Richard Powers
14 – 21 July 2012
«The Personal and the Public: telling truth from art» is the topic of the 9th writing seminar with Donna Leon and Richards Powers in Ernen
Writing is always a nervous blend of memory and imagination, of real personal experience and artistic recreation. Some of the great works of world fiction are little more than embroidered autobiographies, and some of the world’s most acclaimed memoirs have become notorious for incorporating more embellishment than the form is supposed to allow.
For the 9th writing seminar in Ernen, we will look at different forms—letters, poems, memoirs, and fiction—examining the line between personal recollection and imaginative re-invention. We’ll start with some letters of Elizabeth Bishop, then read a couple of her poems in the light of the letters’ disclosures. We’ll repeat the process with letters and a story by Flannery O’Connor, again asking how the private facts change our reading of the public fiction. From there, we will discuss a short memoir, Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and a short novel, Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. How much is a writer allowed to tell about the lives of others, in public? Does it help or hurt a reader, to know where the line is between fact and fiction? Can that line ever be fully known? Along the way, we’ll be writing our own “creative nonfiction,” exploring what it means for something to be “based on a true story.”
At first glance, this may seem like a lot of reading, but both of the books together are still shorter than the novels they’ve read in recent years. It should be pretty manageable, and it gives us a lot to talk about and keep the conversation flowing. Also, both of the books have films (two versions for the Greene, actually), so if we wanted to do a movie night, that would be easy.
The seminar will be rounded off with an attractive program including a great deal of baroque music and a social gathering with culinary delicacies from the region. The writing seminar will be given in English. The course fee is CHF 590.– (Swiss francs). The number of participants is limited.
The seminar 2012 is booked out!