A.H.: September 2008 Archives
Ann Beattie is the Edgar Allan Poe Chair of the University of Virginia's Department of English and Creative Writing. A short story writer and a novelist, she has received critical acclaim for her body of work and has been called "one of our era's most vital masters of the short form" by The Washington Post. In this recording from 2008, Beattie reads from a virtuosic essay-in-progress on the subject of ambient sound in works of literature. Beginning with accounts of poet John Ashbery's "managed chance" method of composing, the noises of drunken Parrotheads in Key West, and a discussion of clichés "whose repetition deadens language," Beattie arrives at a luxuriant analysis of technique in the fiction of James Joyce ("The Dead"), Raymond Carver ("Are These Actual Miles?"), and Richard Yates ("The Best of Everything").
From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (31:42) / 14.5 MB
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This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Ann Beattie. Used with generous permission from Ann Beattie.
Maggie Nelson reads two long poems, "The Mute Story of November" and "The Halo Over the Hospital," from her book Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007). In a brief introduction, Nelson gives credit for the title of her book to Annie Dillard, whose essay "Seeing" refers to Marius van Senden's 1932 Sight and Space, about previously blind persons returned to sight.
From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (15:10) / 6.9 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Maggie Nelson. Used with generous permission from Maggie Nelson.
This 2008 reading features poet Kevin Young reading a selection of then-recent work, including "Aunties," "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," "Black Cat Blues," "Hang Dog Blues," "Flash Flood Blues," "Ode To The Hotel Near The Children's Hospital," "Farm Team," "I Walk The Line (for Johhny Cash)," "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," and four odes to food, including "To Chicken," "To Homemade Wine," "To Catfish," and "To Boudin."
From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (21:51) / 10 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Kevin Young. Used with generous permission from Kevin Young.
Recordings of the Key West Literary Seminar began in 1988, when Meg O'Brien recorded and produced our annual event for WLRN's Radio Reading Service. Two decades later, we continue Meg's work. Our goal is to create a complete digital archive of Seminar recordings, and to release the best of these recordings here. You can listen right here on our site, download the .mp3 files, and/or subscribe to a series of podcasts. Recordings are released on a casual schedule, as soon as they are ready. Contact Arlo Haskell, our media director, with any questions: arlohaskell [at] gmail [dot] com.
We are grateful to Private Ear Recording Studios for their excellent recording and engineering services.
Audio recordings which originate on this page and elsewhere on www.kwls.org are being made available for educational and noncommmercial use only. All rights to the recorded material belong to the author or authors speaking. © 2008. Recordings may not be retransmitted without the preceding statement. Retransmissions must include a link to the original source on www.kwls.org.
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