Yesterday I wrote on the Huffington Post about the ways that liberal arts institutions can combine intimate face to face learning with plugging into broad networks of information and creativity (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-roth/liberal-arts-education-fr_b_360803.html) . We can see a great example of this “plugging in” as two important writers visit campus today.
Tonight (November 18th) there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to creative writing at Wesleyan. At Russell House at 8 pm Renee Gladman will be reading from her experimental work combining fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Author of books such as Not Right Now and Juice Gladman has been teaching in the literary arts program at Brown University.
In the new Shapiro Creative Writing Center on the third floor of Allbritton at 8 pm I will be interviewing Jay Cantor, one of my favorite American authors. Cantor has reinvented the historical novel by exploring how it can be a genre full of fantasy and psychological exploration. His novel Krazy Kat knocked my socks off, and I have been reading him with great pleasure ever since. We will be talking about politics, art, teaching (Cantor teaches at Tufts), history and fantasies of radical invention. Jonathan Cutler’s sociology class has read Cantor’s big novel about the 1960s, Great Neck, and I’m sure that we’ll talk about his depiction of that era.
Great writers are on campus tonight. Come check it out!
[tags]Huffington Post, Renee Gladman, Jay Cantor, Shapiro Creative Writing Center[/tags]