Writers House Fellows online discussion group

 Lily Applebaum and Max McKenna
Spring 2014

Welcome to the archive of our open online course (OOC) on four former Writers House Fellows, Ian Frazier, Jamaica Kincaid, Robert Coover and Susan Howe. In our month together we read small selections from each former Fellow's work, and drew from the audio and video recordings of their visits to the Writers House. Please enjoy this archive, which includes links to audio and visual material from past Writers House events, as well as brief audio introductions recorded by Lily Applebaum and Max McKenna, who led this synchronous group in 2014. We hope you'll enjoy some highlights from our Writers House Fellows Program on your own or, even better, as part of a book group with friends! The weeks are just a suggestion for how to break up this material and provide some very basic structure to this walkthrough.

The Writers House Fellows Program is a yearly project that brings three eminent writers into the intimate space of the Writers House. During a two-day visit, the authors hold both public events and a conversation with students who have been intensively studying the author's work and preparing questions and discussion points all semester long. This special OOC borrows its form and content from the face-to-face course, but groups together Fellows from across the years, lending fresh context to their appearances and revealing how their comments on writing have held up (or not) over the years!

The texts referenced in this section are "If Memory Doesn't Serve," an essay by Ian Frazier published in the October 2004 issue of The Atlantic, various pieces by Jamaica Kincaid from the "Talk of the Town" section of The New Yorker which she wrote from the mid-1970's to the early 1980s and which are collected in the book Talk Stories, "The New Thing" by Robert Coover first published in The Iowa Review Spring-Summer 1994 issue, "Why Do You Write" by Robert Coover first published in Delta June 1989 issue, "The Fallguy's Faith" by Robert Coover from his book Stepmother, and the poem "Melville's Marginalia" by Susan Howe, collected in her book The Nonconformist's Memorial.

Week 1 - Ian Frazier

  1. listen to audio introduction to week 1 [MP3]
  2. watch Frazier read “If Memory Doesn’t Serve” [link to video]
  3. listen to Frazier discussing the tension between the head and the heart [MP3]
  4. listen to Frazier discuss the use of I [MP3]
  5. to watch or listen to the full reading and full interview from Ian Frazier's April 2006 visit to KWH, click here


Week 2 - Jamaica Kincaid

  1. listen to audio introduction to week 2 [MP3]
  2. listen to audio of Kincaid reading from Talk Stories, and her introduction to that reading: Reading intro [MP3], “Expense Account” [MP3], “New” [MP3], “The Exercise” [MP3], “Car Questions” [MP3], “Tableware” [MP3]
  3. listen to Al Filreis's podcast excerpting from Jamaica Kincaid's discussion as part of her Fellows visit in March, 2007: [MP3]
  4. to watch or listen to the full reading and full interview from Jamaica Kincaid's March 2007 visit to KWH, click here


Week 3 - Robert Coover

  1. listen to audio introduction to week 3 [MP3]
  2. watch Coover read “New Thing” [link to video]
  3. watch Coover read “Why Do You Write” [link to video]
  4. listen to Al Filreis briefly discuss "The Fallguy's Faith" followed by Coover's reading of that work [MP3]
  5. to watch or listen to the full reading and full interview from Robert Coover's February 2009 visit to KWH, click here


Week 4 - Susan Howe

  1. listen to audio introduction to week 4 [MP3]
  2. listen to Susan Howe read the preface [MP3] and explain the project [MP3]
  3. listen to Susan Howe read from “Melville’s Marginalia” [MP3]
  4. listen to Susan Howe talk about Wilson Walker Cowen [MP3] and wild libraries [MP3]
  5. to watch or listen to the full reading and full interview from Susan Howe's March 2010 visit to KWH, click here