Wednesdays, January 22- February 26, 2020
7:00-9:00 p.m. (six sessions)
Guide: Danielle Frandina
In this seminar, we will explore the works of award-winning contemporary writers Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Proulx, and Claire Vaye Watkins and how they confront, disrupt, challenge, and complicate the dominant narrative of the West. Leslie Marmon Silko’s now classic novel Ceremony weaves desert landscape and tribal origin stories into a tale of a returning war veteran’s trauma and healing. In Close Range: The Wyoming Stories, the first of three short story collections unified by setting, Annie Proulx tells the hard luck tales of Wyoming’s inhabitants in her exacting prose. The stories are merciless, yet beautifully rendered, the antithesis of a romanticized cowboy tale. Claire Vaye Watkins rounds out the seminar with her stunning debut short story collection Battleborn, set in the Mojave Desert and Death Valley regions of the California-Nevada border.
READING LIST:
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Close Range: The Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
SEMINAR GUIDE:
Danielle Frandina is an educator, writer, and editor who earned her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts and taught at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, where she chaired the school’s humanities department. Danielle is the founder, curator, and host of the Portland reading series Tell It Slant. Her stories and essays can be found in Numero Cinq, Avalon Magazine, Conceptions Southwest and 1001.
Delve Access Program
We want Delve seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. We are happy to offer an Access Program which provides reduced tuition to qualifying participants. Our Access Program offers Delve seminar registrations at a sliding scale amount of $45-$100 per registration.Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you would like to take a Delve at the Access Rate.
