Prairie Schooner

As part of her two week long visit to the UNL campus, acclaimed writer ZZ Packer gave a craft talk yesterday on “Voice in Fiction.” Mobilizing several examples across the literary canon from Huckleberry Finn to White Teeth, Packer discussed what makes a work of fiction “highly voiced” (all fictions have voice, Packer said—the level of transparency of that voice is what differs across novels). Highly-voiced narrators, Packer said, de-familiarize our world, making us “recalibrate our assumptions” garnered from previous narratives. These narratives are inter-textual commentaries of sorts, questioning the prior written word, turning away from the standard truth, and perverting “noble” texts. Packer illuminated the way highly voiced narratives give rise to their own particular truth, moving us away from a strictly craft-based definition of voice and toward a more expansive understanding of the implications of this authorial choice.

Thanks to everybody who stopped by our book fair table, or made it to one of the readings and panels in which our people participated. AWP was a lot of fun this year. We're grateful to have the opportunity to meet and reconnect with so many great writers and/or people. Plus, we sold out of journals, which isn't too shabby.

The final dispatch comes from Senior Fiction Reader Wendy Oleson. Here's what Wendy has to say about Saturday's session:

Today's dispatches from the 2012 AWP Conference in Chicago comes to us from Kwame Dawes, Claire Harlan-Orsi, and Wendy Oleson:

ATTENTION READERS: NEW CONTRIBUTOR!
This is the first installment of an ongoing series written for the blog by Richard Graham. Richard is an associate professor and media services librarian at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he studies the educational use of comics and serves as the film and art history liaison. He'll be writing posts that examine UNL’s, Nebraska’s, and the larger literary world’s connections with the comics medium. Graham’s recent publication reprints and contextualizes the American government’s use of the comic book medium. Being a librarian, he has an affinity for cats, going so far as to receive a community award (and the occasional hate mail) for his work in spaying and neutering the feral cats that reside on the UNL campus. Welcome, Richard!