Writer-in-Residence

John McManus

The Creative Writing Program is pleased to announce that John McManus will join us in the spring of 2008 as our Visiting Writer.

John McManus is the author of a novel, Bitter Milk, and two collections of short fiction, Born on a Train and Stop Breakin Down, which made him, at 22, the youngest ever recipient of the Whiting Award. His stories have appeared in places like Oxford American, Tin House and Ploughshares. He was born and raised in Blount County and currently teaches in the MFA Program at Goddard College.

Course Description

ENG 582: Risk Fiction

This course will examine works of contemporary fiction that employ at their heart some fundamental risk: an unsympathetic or polemical narrator; a premise that on the surface seems to embrace racial or cultural stereotypes; an unnamed POV character who becomes secondary to the landscape that eventually swallows him. Discussion and critical writing will center on what we as writers can take away from the success or failure of the execution of these risks, and whether each one is an essential aspect of its text or merely a distraction from some more worthwhile expression. In addition to critical writing, students will each write a story or novel excerpt inspired by the style of one or more texts on the syllabus.

Reading List

• Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles
• J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello
• Nicholson Baker, The Fermata
• Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
• Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
• Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
• William Gass, The Heart of the Heart of the Country
• Joy Williams,  Taking Care
• W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
• Cesar Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter