Interview in The Believer Logger

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From The Believer Logger:

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Brandon Hobson: In the past you’ve talked about point-of-view being the writer’s greatest tool. Can you talk a little more about that, and maybe how it’s better than, say, voice?

Stewart O’Nan: Getting inside your character’s head and letting the reader see the world through not just their eyes but their sensibility creates an intimacy that can’t be duplicated in any other medium.  And point of view includes voice, discovering the appropriate language and tone for each character.  Every choice contributes to bringing the character’s emotional world across to the reader, and as you’re making those choices in your early drafts, you as a writer understand more and more about your characters—their fears and desires, their history, the people closest to them—so that when they face situations, both you and the reader understand why they do the things they do, whether or not you (and the reader) agree with them.

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Lobster in A Reader’s Book of Days

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From the Boston Globe:

A READER’S BOOK OF DAYS: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year

By Tom Nissley
Illustrated by Joanna Neborsky
Norton, 448 pp., $24.95

Believers in astrology will be put off by this book, because how could the zodiac really work if Thomas Mann and V. C. Andrews share a birthday (June 6)? Now, Edgar Allen Poe and Patricia Highsmith (Jan. 19) does make sense. One of those essential household objects, this book lists writers’ birthdays, death dates, and important events (such as the amputation of Arthur Rimbaud’s right leg on May 27). Even more tantalizingly, it combs through the literary landscape to highlight important fictional dates, from the Jan. 1 diary entry by Charlotte Haze in “Lolita” to Dec. 20, the date on which all of the action in Stewart O’Nan’s “Last Night at the Lobster” takes place. Terrifically fun.

AWP Conference 2013

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Stewart will be at the following AWP Conference events this weekend.

Thursday, 3/7, 3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.

Room 103,
Plaza Level		 R218. Does Place Still Matter? The Relevance of Regional Fiction in the 21st Century. (Brett Boham, Stewart O’Nan, Susan Straight, Alex Espinoza, Michael Jaime-Becerra) Attempts to categorize American literature often begin and end with region. Southern fiction. New England poetry. Midwestern novel. But to what extent is regionalism a useful lens through which to understand contemporary American literature? How do so-called regional writers conceptualize place? And has the expansion of the American counterculture and social media forever changed the landscape of regional fiction? Panelists will discuss the advantages and limitations of thinking regionally.

Saturday, 3/9, 10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

Room 306,
Level 3		 S150. If These Walls Could Talk… Oh Wait, They Do!(Eleanor Henderson, Stewart O’Nan, Tea Obreht) The whole world is a stage, but as fiction writers we get to choose where and when to set a story. That decision can influence everything else in the novel, for better or worse. Four novelists talk about the pressures that settings, both urban and rural, can place on our fiction, and how and why to make choices about landscape.

Writers in Paradise 2013

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Stewart will be at Writers in Paradise (January 19-27, 2013).  Here’s the schedule:

Short Story I and II

These workshops will focus on the art of the short story, including complex characterization, apt language (diction, mood, tone, and imagery), appropriate and accurately rendered setting, structural integrity, thematic complexity, and point-of-view appropriate to the characters and the action.

Faculty: Andre Dubus III (I), Stewart O’Nan (II)

Writers’ Conference Evening Reading Series

Thursday, January 24
Stewart O’Nan and David Yoo

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