Sewanee: Day 2

The day started early because I'm still on Eastern time, but that's okay because I had a lot of reading to do. In fact, after breakfast, I sat in the campus coffee shop to finish up even though I missed the first couple of Fellows' readings (I made it for the second half of the hour).

The morning's main event, though, was a craft lecture by Tim O'Brien on the importance of imagination, of scene and the dramatization of human behavior in stead of detail for the sake of detail. This reminded me of listening to Richard Bausch talk about "mere verisimilitude"--the idea is that detail must be in service to story. It's a point worth remembering.

Our workshop met for the first time right after lunch. It went well, I think. Tim O'Brien and Erin McGraw worked well together and the group--16 of us--did a reasonably good job of discussing the pieces, considering how little time we had to prepare.

Then there was the reading by Romulus Linney of a new play he's written. It's a two-person play, so it was easy to follow him doing both parts. That was followed by a nice reception right before dinner, and after dinner we had a reading by Mary Jo Salter, which was terrific. And now parties are breaking out in various parts of campus, and I'm going in search of one.