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Voice: The Eternal Pursuit of Eloquence w/ Mitchell S. Jackson
October 3, 2020 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
$100WHAT: A two-hour online webinar
WITH: Mitchell S. Jackson
WHEN: Saturday, October 3rd 1PM-3PM PST
WHERE: ZOOM! (But of course.) Meeting registration and access details will be provided in advance.
HOW MUCH: $100. Payment plans are always available, contact Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com.
SCHOLARSHIPS: As with most of our offerings, scholarships are available. Click here to apply.
One of the most effective ways in prose to, as Susan Sontag says, “preserve the works of the mind against oblivion,” is to craft an eloquent voice. But before one can do that, one must know what is meant by an eloquent voice. In this seminar, we will define literary voice and identify its most prevalent aspects: diction, syntax, acoustics, and visual logic included. As well, we will discuss philosophies on why voice is important. The seminar will also include discussion on the cultural and historical factors involved in shaping a literary voice. It will furthermore cover several rhetorical tools used to compose an eloquent voice. We will read published exemplars to foster a critical discussion of the context, philosophies, and tools presented in the seminar. Finally, we will complete a writing exercise with an eye towards applying the tools discussed.
Mitchell S. Jackson’s debut novel The Residue Years received wide critical praise. Jackson is the winner of a Whiting Award. His novel also won The Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for The Center for Fiction Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the PEN / Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, and the Hurston / Wright Legacy Award. His honors include fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Lannan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, PEN America, TED, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Center for Fiction. His writing has been featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, Time Magazine, and Esquire Magazine, as well as in The New Yorker, Harpers, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Washington Post Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere. His nonfiction book Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family was published in the spring of 2019 and named a best book of the year by fifteen publications, including NPR, Time Magazine, The Paris Review, The Root, Kirkus Reviews, and Buzzfeed. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago.