12-4-08 Week Fourteen Karen Russel Reading and Final Votes!

So Today was the Day! and what a day it was. Not only did we decide on our final VWS for next year but we also had the Karen Russel Reading. I will discuss the events in chronological order:

The presentations wrapped up and as they did I made copious notes on the merit of each finalist. When it came time to vote I was confident in my decisions among my choices were Rachel Zucker, Claudia Rankine, The woman who wrote secretary, the female essayist, and someone else who is escaping me at the moment. I look forward to coming to the events next year.

The Karen Russel was adorable, she's like a little munchkin! I've always been jealous of tiny people they seem so compact, easier to fit in airplane seats, and they can be "pudgy" or "rolly-poly", but when you are 5-11 you just get"big". I thought of all the writers we have had she gave the most interesting responses to the Q&A part of the reading. She was very straightforward and articulate and did not seem at all taken off-guard by the questions. Her response to the genre she considers her work to be in was interesting. She claimed "Literary Fiction" because of her attention to sentences, and I can certainly see that element in her work. But she mentioned that her books are placed in a variety of "genres" at book stores including YA, and fantasy. So I suppose the jury is out and it all returns to the wonderful realm of semantics and how one defines "genre".

I also liked that she gave a very human and personal explanation behind her work and stressed the idea of "write what your good at" and forget the consequences of, writing almost exclusively in a child voice etc. I strongly agree with this idea and believe that all writers have an intuition of what their strengths are and when a story is good. Russel has found her voice but her challenge, in my opinion, will be to do the next step. To expand her voice to layer it with different narrators, settings, situations, this only comes with experience but by being true to writing what she wants to write she is on the right path.

She, of all the writers, really inspired me to personally keep writing, because I saw in her why she writes. And it is to tell a story she needs to tell. Was it Joyce who said that all the stories in the world are already out there existing in space, and the writers job is just to run into run. Russel's reading gave me a new insight to her work and it was a great close to this class.

I also liked the

12-1-08 Week Fourteen Final Discussion of VWS Canidates

Today in class we met and the proposal for VWS finalists was under way. Before class I had printed out all the candidates and read a fair portion of the samples I was given. There were two people that I knew I would be voting for, Rachel Zucker, and the female essayist. I really loved all the poems I have red of Zucker's and I like that she is a "confessional" poet, and doesn't just throw allot of random and bizarre images together and slap it with title. It is difficult for me to understand contemporary poetry, possibly because I'm stupid, or possibly because I'm a woman and am not so impressed by the very male desire to master and manipulate language but rather the approach of using language, with purpose and precision to articulate an experience of being. Personal or Universal this is the poetry that appeals to me. But I'm not saying other forms of poetry do not have value or that they do not take skill and time to create, just that I, personally, don not get anything from them.

I liked the female essayist and also Claudia Rankine, who I think is delectably bizarre and incredibly intelligent, while still being readable.
I am at the moment at a loss for who to vote for, all the presenters did such a wonderful job and they are all so passionate about their person. It makes me feel a little "detached" from the contemporary literature world, because I have no "favorite person" favorite writer :(.

I look forward to voting next Thursday.