Alan Cheuse

About:

"The past is never dead. Its not even past..." William Faulkner's famous quotation (from Requiem for a Nun) resonates for all writers, but particularly for those of us who have dealt with or are currently writing about historical subjects, whether national or international or family history and personal history. Such subjects may haunt us but we often find ourselves without the skills to move beyond our initial attraction or attachment to it. Our goal is to acquire enough narrative technique to give the material the freshness and vitality, not to mention the immediacy and vividness, that Faulkner conjures up in that remark.

If you have the raw material of a narrative, either fiction or nonfiction, about the past, this workshop should aid you in coming to terms with the nature of the technique you'll need in order to move along with its composition. We will analyze the pages you bring in, practice critique at a level appropriate to each individual manuscript, offer suggestions for further revision, and suggest a course of reading as well as writing that will, in most cases, help you to enlarge your practice as a writer.

Requirements:

Two to five page samples or elaborated notes about a project. Longer manuscripts by arrangement only.

Biography:

"The Voice of Books on National Public Radio"— that's how novelist, essayist, and short story writer Alan Cheuse has been described. For over twenty-five years, Cheuse has been "reading for America" every week on NPR, and writing a number of books of his own. He is the author of the novels The Grandmothers' Club and The Light Possessed, and The Bohemians, a historical novel about John Reed and Louise Bryant. His autobiographical Fall Out of Heaven focused in large part on the life of his father, a pilot in the Red Air Force during the 1930s. In his short stories, he has treated historical subjects from the conquest of Mexico to the boyhood of Ben Franklin. His forthcoming novel, To Catch the Lightning (October, 2008), follows the career of turn-of-the-century photographer Edward S. Curtis and his quest to photograph the western tribes of North America.

Cheuse was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and attended Rutgers University. He worked at various jobs, from toll-taker on the New Jersey Turnpike, to school teacher in Mexico, to journalist, before completing an advanced degree in comparative literature and taking a teaching post at Bennington College. He was in his late thirties before he began writing fiction. Since then, he has taught at various colleges and universities. Cheuse currently serves as a member of the writing faculty at George Mason University and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.