Craft Seminar: Whimsy in Constraints: Finding the Unexpected Truth at the Fount of Formal Refreshment with Matthew Gavin Frank
Craft Seminar: Whimsy in Constraints: Finding the Unexpected Truth at the Fount of Formal Refreshment with Matthew Gavin Frank
1 Session: Saturday, July 18
12:00-1:30pm ET
Matthew Gavin Frank
Matthew Gavin Frank is the author, most recently, of the nonfiction book, Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines, which has been described as "An exquisite, lyrical foray into the world of deep-sea divers, the obsession and madness that oceans inspire in us, and the story of submarine inventor Peter Madsen’s murder of journalist Kim Wall—a captivating blend of literary prose, science writing, and true crime." He’s a professor of creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts Program at Northern Michigan University, where he is also the Nonfiction/Hybrids Editor of the literary magazine, Passages North.
In the craft essay, “Finding a Form Before the Form Finds You,” essayist Patrick Madden writes, “I appreciate the value of subversion and of challenging myself… choosing or borrowing a form, then writing under constraint, with and against expectation, to force yourself into thinking new ways.” In this lecture, we will discuss various ways of subverting one’s initial engagement of a subject via seemingly whimsical formal experimentation, until that whimsy gathers the sort of gravity that essayists sometimes (perhaps reductively) call “ecstatic truth” or “emotional truth.” We will take a look at various examples of such formal experimentation, from those launched and performed by the Oulipo collective in 1960s France, to contemporary “updaters” of such essayistic experimentation, as Carmen Maria Machado, Jenny Boully, and Judith Schalansky. We will close with a “subversive” writing prompt.
Workshop Highlights:
A frank discussion of the interaction between form and subject matter.
An engagement of a fun, whimsical, generative writing exercise.
An opportunity to ask the author anything about the lecture's themes, and/or about the writing and publishing process.
Matthew Gavin Frank is the author, most recently, of the nonfiction book, Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines, which the writer and editor Michele Filgate called, "One of the best books I've ever read." Submersed has been described as "An exquisite, lyrical foray into the world of deep-sea divers, the obsession and madness that oceans inspire in us, and the story of submarine inventor Peter Madsen’s murder of journalist Kim Wall—a captivating blend of literary prose, science writing, and true crime." Frank is also the author of the nonfiction books Flight of the Diamond Smugglers, The Mad Feast, Preparing the Ghost, Pot Farm, and Barolo, as well as the poetry books The Morrow Plots, Warranty in Zulu, and Sagittarius Agitprop. His work has appeared in Harper's, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Guernica, The New Republic, Iowa Review, Salon, Conjunctions, The Believer, and the Best Travel Writing and Best Food Writing anthologies. He’s a professor of creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts Program at Northern Michigan University, where he is also the Nonfiction/Hybrids Editor of the literary magazine, Passages North.
