A delicate aggression: savagery and survival in the Iowa Writers' Workshop

Description

The brilliant misfit : Flannery O'Connor -- The star : W.D. Snodgrass -- The suicide : Robert Shelley -- The professional : R.V. Cassill -- The guru : Marguerite Young -- The turncoat : Robert Lowell -- Mad poets : Dylan Thomas and John Berryman -- Celebrity faculty : Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving -- Infidels : Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo -- The crossover : Rita Dove -- The genius : Jane Smiley -- Red high-tops for life : T.C. Boyle -- The mystic : Marilynne Robinson -- The warrior : Anthony Swofford -- The voice : Ayana Mathis and mass culture.;"As the world's preeminent creative writing program, the Iowa Writers' Workshop has produced an astonishing number of distinguished writers and poets since its establishment in 1936. Its alumni and faculty include twenty-eight Pulitzer Prize winners, six U.S. poet laureates, and numerous National Book Award winners. This volume follows the program from its rise to prominence in the early 1940s under director Paul Engle, who promoted the "workshop" method of classroom peer criticism. Meant to simulate the rigors of editorial and critical scrutiny in the publishing industry, this educational style created an environment of both competition and community, cooperation and rivalry. Focusing on some of the exceptional authors who have participated in the program--such as Flannery O'Connor, Dylan Thomas, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Smiley, Sandra Cisneros, T.C. Boyle, and Marilynne Robinso--David Dowling examines how the Iowa Writers' Workshop has shaped professional authorship, publishing industries, and the course of American literature"--Page 2 of cover. The brilliant misfit : Flannery O'Connor -- The star : W.D. Snodgrass -- The suicide : Robert Shelley -- The professional : R.V. Cassill -- The guru : Marguerite Young -- The turncoat : Robert Lowell -- Mad poets : Dylan Thomas and John Berryman -- Celebrity faculty : Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving -- Infidels : Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo -- The crossover : Rita Dove -- The genius : Jane Smiley -- Red high-tops for life : T.C. Boyle -- The mystic : Marilynne Robinson -- The warrior : Anthony Swofford -- The voice : Ayana Mathis and mass culture.