2009 Writers Conference

This year marks the 40th annual UND Writers Conference (March 31—April 4). Since its conception, the Writers Conference has progressively gained more and more acclaim and recognition, featuring names like: Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, Thomas McGrath and just last year Sir Salman Rushdie made an appearance. Come explore the minds of some of the best writers around. This year’s theme is “wit,” and given the Conference’s lineup, it’s easy to see why. Here’s a little taste of what’s in store.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
The very classrooms of UND have spawned someone critics have dubbed “the voice of Generation X,” the “James Bond of pop-culture journalists,” and the “postmodern Aristotle of the information age.” Chuck Klosterman has made a living critiquing popular culture – and in doing so, has become a popular culture icon himself.

But he’s not the type of seasoned celebrity that seems pretentious and detached from reality. He’s so laid back that although his last name is pronounced Kloh-ster-man, he’s perfectly OK with letting people mispronounce it without correcting them. Klosterman admits that he doesn’t feel like a New Yorker, even though it is his current home. And when you see him in person, you can tell. His clothes are not the clothes of a famous author and journalist, or even that of an office worker. He’s the type of guy who looks like he’s usually wearing something along the lines of a college sweatshirt or a concert tee-shirt.

After graduating from UND in 1994, Klosterman went on to contribute to the Fargo Forum, the Akron Beacon Journal, New York Times Magazine, The Believer, Washington Post, ESPN, GQ, Spin, Esquire, and on top of it all, he wrote five books. Arguably, his best and most acclaimed work stems from the world of music. Klosterman has interviewed artists such as Bono, Marilyn Manson, Billy Joel, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, and Britney Spears (during her better days).

“Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas” begins with the 2003 article based on Klosterman’s time spent interviewing Spears during an Esquire photo shoot: “Twenty feet away from me, Britney Spears is pantless,” he begins. “Her sculpted hair makes her look like a Marilyn Monroe on a date with DiMaggio, assuming they’re going to Manhattan’s finest pantless restaurant. She’s wearing a sweater that probably costs more than my parents’ house, and her white heels add five inches to her five-foot-four pantless frame. Oh, and did I mention she’s pantless? She’s not wearing any pants. This is a hard detail to ignore.”

The article goes on to debate the “Madonna/whore” dichotomy while Spears insists she has no idea what Klosterman is talking about. What sets Klosterman apart from other pop culture critics, in both good and bad ways, is his use of personal essay embedded into his articles. While many have accused him of being narcissistic in his writing style, others appreciate him for the very same reason. Whichever way he is viewed, his wit in undeniable.

Chuck Klosterman will give a reading of his work at the UND Writers Conference on Thursday, April 2nd at 8 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ballroom.

Brianna Conway & Cindy Shawcross
Contributing Writers

CHARLES BAXTER
Charles Baxter is “one of our most gifted writers,” declares the Chicago Tribune. Baxter has written across the continuum of literary genres: “Chameleon” and “The South Dakota Guidebook,” both collections of poetry, were Baxter’s first published works, yet his most recent publication is a novel titled “The Soul Thief.” In the years between, Baxter published three other novels, several collections of short stories, essays and novellas.

Baxter has a gift for subtlety; the real message in his stories takes place underneath the twisting plot lines, the fully-realized characters, and the everyday places made extraordinary through Baxter’s language. In one of his essays from the collection “The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot,” Baxter explains his approach to fiction, stating, “A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.”

Baxter’s characters are often complex and conflicted, dark and confused, and so well developed that they create a sense of real people with pasts, futures, flaws, hopes and complications. In his short story “Lake Stephen,” a young man tries to surprise his lover by spontaneously skinny-dipping:

“[S]he knew, quite a bit in advance of his actually doing it, that he would grin at her, a happy smile breaking across his pleasant bearded face, and, with a yelp, lower his underwear and turn around and dash into the water, shouting as he went and making half-articulate exclamations like a man running into battle. He wanted to be dangerous and unpredictable, and so, watching him, she did her best to look amazed at what he was doing.”

In an interview for Barnes and Noble, Baxter was asked if he had any advice for aspiring writers and responded, “Don’t quit. Don’t quit. Don’t quit. Don’t quit.” Baxter’s 38-year publication record shows that this is good advice, indeed.

Charles Baxter will give a reading at the UND Writers Conference on Friday, April 3rd at 8 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ballroom.

Kim Stewart
Contributing Writer

JACQUELINE OSHEROW
Jacqueline Osherow writes in her first collection, “Looking for Angels in New York” (1988): “This is a universe of constant changes.” And it is those changes and the links between them that are illustrated in her poetry. Through images as simple as a sprig of jasmine, she bridges a distant past to the reality of the present with a style that resonates through time. Both humorous and sincere, Osherow’s casual, conversational tone creates a unique honesty that questions the world and finds answers in the connections between people, places, times. Her poetry never occupies a single place or time, but rather extends across generations and continents, fusing them together.

In a poem from her fifth and most recent collection in which she explores the intricacies of the Jewish tradition, Osherow writes, “That’s what I want: to see myself in jasmine, / to capture and refract another light, / for a woman on a not-yet-discovered moon / of an unknown solar system’s outer planet / to know instantly precisely what I mean / despite the hundred decades since I’ve uttered it.”

Osherow has certainly captured and refracted a light we can all recognize as ourselves, our own curiosity about the world. Her poetry invites us in and seems to speak for us as well as to us. As our lives become increasingly more chaotic, we continue to look for some sense of control, and this is mimicked beautifully in Osherow’s inquisitive content and her fluid movement through traditional, controlled forms (terza rima, sonnet, villanelle).

In her early collection (one that has quickly become a favorite of mine)  Osherow writes, “In air so clear it seemed to freeze the light / So that I saw, not by streetlamps, but by / Cold itself, the thin, white plumes of breath / That floated from my mouth and rose and curled / And held, like veils, beside my head.”

Osherow’s poems allow her readers to see—not by eyesight alone, but through the use of language—a vividly honest depiction of humanity. It is easy to have faith in her poetry.

Jacqueline Osherow will give a reading at the UND Writer’s Conference on Tuesday, March 31st, at 8 p.m. in the UND Memorial Ballroom.

Lisa Linrud
Contributing Writer

STEVE ALMOND
In his most recent collection of non-fiction, “Not that You Asked: Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions,” Steve Almond examines his complex relationship with the works of his literary hero, Kurt Vonnegut. As he looks at the many reasons he “crushes on Vonnegut,” Almond comes to the conclusion that in his books Vonnegut “performed the greatest feat of alchemy known to man: the conversion of grief into laughter.”

This same alchemic wizardry can be seen in Almond’s own work as he uses his startlingly apt observations and biting wit to look at the world. Almond writes of his childhood, his humorous (yet morally gray) adolescence, and his adulthood in a way that lets us re-see our own experience. Nothing is off-limits as Almond examines everything from his own foray into “The Bewildering Joys of the Half-Planned Pregnancy” to his short-lived “Demagogue Days” of Fox News infamy. Almond’s straightforward style and accessible language make us see the humor in all aspects of life.

In order to discuss the fear he experiences as a first-time parent, Almond writes a chapter titled: “10 Ways I Killed My Daughter Within Her First 72 Hours of Life.” As he convinces himself that he has, among other things, cut the umbilical cord inaccurately, suctioned his daughter’s nose incorrectly, and overfed her (all of which, of course, he is sure will result in her death) we find humor, not in Almond’s unfounded fear that he has hurt his daughter, but in the abject terror he experiences at the mere possibility of making a misstep.

Throughout his fiction and non-fiction alike, Almond moves seamlessly from the quietly poignant to the startlingly funny. No topic is sacred as we find ourselves laughing out loud even as we wonder “Is it okay that I just laughed at that?” until we find ourselves contemplating the many reasons we crush on Steve Almond.

Steve Almond will give a reading at the UND Writers Conference on Wednesday, April 1st, at 8 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ballroom.

Andrea Stevenson
Contributing Writer

GREG WILLIAMSON
Greg Williamson is a poet with extensive talents. He has the ability to see into the mundane, ordinary parts of life, and make them come alive by using his quick wit and exceptional insight. He is a master of rhyme schemes, never allowing himself to be limited to one form. His poems are as diverse as his style; they cover a wide variety of topics, ranging from medieval romances to the frustrations of Wile E. Coyote.

Currently, Williamson has produced three collections of poems. His first book, “The Silent Partner,” was met with critical acclaim, garnering him the, Nicholas Roerich Prize in 1995. His second book, “Errors in the Script,” was runner-up for the NYC Poets’ Prize and was praised for its creativity and originality. While he experimented with different styles in these first two works, he concentrated on sonnets in his most recent, “A Most Marvelous Piece of Luck.” Even in this antique format, Williamson manages to bring a new breath of life that contemporary readers are sure to love.

Williamson has the tendency to write in a playful fashion that bases its humor off of puns and quips. A good example of this is this excerpt from his poem, “Origami”: “Some of the girls, some of the older ones, / Make effigies of boys and ... ‘Goodness sakes! / They ask what I can make. ‘I make mistakes.’ / ‘No really, Mr. Greg!’ They don’t like puns. / Perhaps they want to be addressed a little more seriously.”

While a jocular theme can come off as immature in some cases, Williamson manages to present his content with a refreshing new twist. His valuable insight validates his opinions and draws the reader into his work. Anyone interested in poetry, or even simply a humorous read, should add this acclaimed author’s collections to his or her list of books to read.

Greg Williamson will give a reading of his work at the UND Writers Conference on Wednesday, April 1st at 4 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ballroom.

Nate Norby
Contributing Writer

KAREN RUSSELL
Karen Russell’s first collection of short stories, “St.Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” opens with two sisters, Ava and Ossie, left alone in their grandfather’s rusted house. “‘You girls will be fine,’ the Chief slurred. ‘Feed the gators, don’t talk to strangers. Lock the door at night.’”

In many of the stories, it is this absence and inadequacy of parental guardianship that propels the adolescent protagonists into their sometimes beautiful, sometimes dangerous, always fraught grappling with becoming adults. These are not the usual narratives of youth but rather magical fables of the son of a Minotaur father, girls raised by werewolves, two boys who dream the same simultaneous postmonitions of historic disasters.

These stories are funny, but don’t expect too many big belly laughs. Russell’s humor is forked and delivers satirical commentary on adult reality. The absurd and supernatural plots feel comic at first, but as the reader becomes submersed in the imaginative world of the young narrators, what becomes funny are the moments when our familiar reality breaks through, such as this moment in “Haunting Olivia”:

“This particular summer, our parents are in Sao Paulo. They send us postcards of bullet-pocked favelas and flaming hillocks of trash. ‘GLAD YOU’RE NOT HERE! xoxo, the ‘Rents.’ I guess the idea is that all the misery makes their marital problems seem petty and inconsequential.’

Many of Russell’s stories take place in the lush swamps of southern Florida, in the realm of gist, creating settings and characters that function as metaphor for feeling and defamiliarize adulthood for her audience. The line between imagination and reality is never certain, and the experience of these stories is like navigating a fantastic maze, alternately meandering and darting, following the characters around blind corners and backtracking from dead-ends, leaving the reader not with a resolution but a pervasive sense of a life that continues beyond the page.

Karen Russell will give a reading of her work at the UND Writers Conference on Thursday, April 2nd, at 4 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ballroom.

Maggie Kainulainen
Contributing Writer

MARCO CANDIDA
Candida is a great admirer of American fiction: “Americans,” he says, “are incredible storytellers.” (He’s often told me how much he loves Stephen King). Italy, Candida says, is “a land of poets. We’re extremely tied to our poetic tradition … a good book in Italy is always one that’s extremely innovative, with prose like poetry, with a certain level of experimentation in the structure, and a level of metafiction.”

Metafiction, or writing about the act of writing, is pervasive in Candida’s work; but now he says he’s more interested in simply writing stories “full of invention.”

Enter “Dream Diary”, a work still very much about the act of writing but now in the form of a dream log with a narrator, Verino Lunari, whose hallucinatory, imagistic dreams are inspired by his anti-depressant medication. The novel progresses through the dreams the narrator has entered in his diary, and in these dreams we find demons possessed by human spirits and breathing objects and other wonderfully imaginative snippets while we also learn of the narrator’s waking self through the characters and conflicts appearing in his dreams. As a further complication, the protagonist of the narrator’s dreams is often the author, Marco Candida, further blurring the ideas of fiction and reality.

Here’s a little taste from the diary entry about the narrator’s room full of things that breathe:

“Maybe this is why—because we’re becoming obsolete much faster than other things—that we worship God with a symbol that’s just a thing. We kneel in veneration before a thing that resists the intrigues of obscurity—that doesn’t wrinkle, doesn’t break, doesn’t change, or if it does, then slowly, much more slowly than we things do—; we observe things, we want them, study them, buy them, learn how to use them, and maybe all because we really want to be like them: we want to be the guitar hanging on the wall of our room, one of the pens in the penholder, pages full of words on philosophy—we want to be a book, probably. We’re things that revere other things, that look at other things with love, with envy, because we’re living, breathing things and when we become things like any other thing we’ll have crumbled into a million bits and won’t even have the dignity of a chair, a table … a book. Of things that survive…”

Marco Candida, with his translator Elizabeth Harris, will give a reading of his work at the UND Writers Conference on Tuesday, March 31st at 4 p.m. in the Union Ballroom.
Elizabeth Harris
Contributing Writer