The Mystery of You
9:00 pm to Noon - Nonfiction WordShop
“The word ‘essay’ comes from the French and essentially means to try or to attempt. The opposite of the word ‘remember’ is not ‘forget,’ but ‘dismember.’ And so the act of remembering, whether through the writing of a memoir or personal essay, is a reaching for the shards of one’s own past,” says author André Dubus III. “This strikes me as the most honest and humble creative approach possible, one capable of producing art with words. Come to this workshop, and I will seek to demystify for you some of those writerly tools and skills that, if they are sharp enough, and if the writer can summon enough daily faith and nerve, can penetrate the mystery of story itself, especially the story of you.”
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Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. His most recent novel, Such Kindness, was published in June 2023, and a collection of personal essays, Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin, was published in March 2024. He is also the editor of Reaching Inside: 50 Acclaimed Authors on 100 Unforgettable Short Stories, (Godine, 2023).
Dubus has been a finalist for the National Book Award; has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, and three Pushcart Prizes; and is a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. |