by Elizabeth Twiddy :
www.elizabethtwiddy.comI’m thrilled to be teaching the DWC’s first Visiting Authors course this Winter Term. We, the DWC faculty, put our heads together and decided that a course like this, taught each term by a different instructor, would greatly benefit ourselves and our students, alike. So, what is it? Why’s it so great?
The authors that come to read for our DWC series are among the best in the country and the world. We want to maximize what we take from these gems—these short bursts of brilliance that share a room with us once in a while.
We realized that it’s not always easy to grasp what an author is saying when he or she reads aloud: creative works of writing are dense, and they’re not usually 100% accessible the first time around, especially when they’re only heard and not seen. We want to be right there with our Visiting Authors when they come to read their fabulous works at the DWC—we want to get the maximum possible out of those special readings. That’s where the Visiting Authors course comes in: before each reading, our class will meet for an hour to discuss a sampling of that author’s work so that we can all better benefit from the reading.
I’m honored and excited to be teaching the first round of the Visiting Authors course. We have a fabulous line-up this term: poets Derek Pollard and Derek Henderson will read from their co-authored collection; Santee Frazier will read from highly acclaimed his first book of poems; Steve Almond will read from his fiction and nonfiction; Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon will read from her collections of poetry; Greg Ames will read from his new award-winning novel; and poets Nate Pritts and Matt Hart will read together from their various and respective books of poems.
Classes begin next week, and there’s still room left in the course: sign up now!
See you at the DWC!
Elizabeth Twiddy’s first collection of poems is Love-Noise (Standing Stone Books, 2010). She has a chapbook, Zoo Animals in the Rain (Turtle Ink Press, 2009), and her poems have appeared in many journals, including Barrow Street, POOL, The Alembic, Two Rivers Review, and the Australian journal Skive.
