Fulfills Required Genre Studies or Group E requirement.

The Lannan Foundation produces one of the finest reading series in the country. Every other Wednesday, at the Lensic Theatre in Santa Fe, writers with national and international reputations read from their work, and then are interviewed afterwards, on stage (in comfortable chairs), by other writers of national and international reptuation. This literature course for creative writers focuses exclusively on the work of the writers of the Lannan Series. The class will attend all the readings during the fall semester, all the while reading and discussing the work of both the readers and their interviewers. For each author and interviewer in the series, students will write essays (1) which illuminate elements of craft that compel them, and (2) which relate these craft elements to their own creative work—the work of their dissertation. The course schedule will be simple: One week we’ll meet on campus (on Wed from 4-6:30) and discuss the books, stories, poems, memoirs and essays of the authors featured in the series. The next week, we’ll drive together up to Santa Fe to the Lensic Theatre.

Because of our trips to Santa Fe, this is a larger time commitment than your usual 3 credit-hour class. But my hope (my certainty) is that it will be more than worth it. The schedule of readers for the fall 2006 series is not out yet, but creative writers should welcome the suspense (curiosity plus delay). The Lannan series does not disappoint. Between 2004 and spring of 2006, writers in the series included: Salman Rushdie, Ted Kooser, Jim Harrison, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, A.S. Byatt, Robert Hass, W.S. Merwin, T Coraghessan Boyle, Howard Zinn, Louise Erdrich, Louise Gluck, Howard Zinn, George Saunders, Eavan Boland, Susan Sontag, Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks, Wole Soyinka, Bei Dao, and Margaret Atwood (just to name a few…)