Reading list for MA

I promised my friends at uni that I would let them know, via my blog, what happens on an MA course in creative writing. Well – here is the reading list. I’ve just spent a fortune at Amazon and have had to rearrange my home to accommodate the mammoth delivey of books that I am now expecting.
I was warned there was a lot of reading to do – they weren’t joking!
Never mind, I enjoy a challenge, and having read nothing but set texts or chick-lit for ages this lot will make a refreshing change and broaden my outlook on life. I am ashamed to say that I have only read two books off the list before – so I’m in for a very busy summer.
Fiction Workshop I
Borges, Jorge Luis, Labyrinths, 2000
Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities, 2002
Carver, Raymond, Cathedral, 1999
Crace, Jim, Continent/Quarantine, 1987
Ford, Richard, The Granta Book of the American Long Story, 1999
Ford, Richard, ed The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, 2007
Kelman, James, Selected Stories, 2001
McEwan, Ian, First Love, Last Rites, 2006
Messud, Clare, Hunters, 2001
Munro, Alice, Selected Stories, 1997
Plimpton, George, ed., Beat Writers at Work: the Paris Review Interviews, 1999
Plimpton, George, ed., Women Writers at Work: the Paris Review Interviews, 2003
Rushdie, Salman, East, West, 1994
Simpson, Helen, Hey Yeah Right Get a Life, 2001
Elisabeth Taylor, The Blush, 1958
Richard Yates, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, 1962
Tim Winton, The Turning, 2005
Booker, Christopher, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, 2005
James Wood, How Fiction Works, Jonathan Cape 2008
Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead, Virago 2007
Morley, David, The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing, Cambridge University Press 2007
Mullan, John, How Novels Work, Oxford University Press, 2006
Lodge, David, Consciousness and the Novel, Harvard University Press, 2002
Prose, Francine, Reading Like a Writer; Haper Perennial 2007
WRITING AND THE PRACTICE OF LITERATURE
JA Baker’s The Peregrine
Journals by other writers, e.g. Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence, Dorothy Wordsworth, Gerald Manley Hopkins, John Fowles, etc.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol 1-4
The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Nikos Kazantzakis, The Life and Times of Alexei Zorba / Zorba the Greek
Maureen Freely, Enlightenment
Alexander McMasters, Stuart: A Life Backwar
Jim Crace, The Devil’s Larder
Lynda Barry, What It Is
Peter Blegvad, Leviathan
J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition
J.G. Ballard, Miracles of Life
Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners
James Kelman, How Late it Was, How Late
Damion Searls, ; The Whale
Damion Searls, What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going
[Juan Gabriel Vasquez, The Secret History of Costaguana]
Margaret Atwood, Negotiating the with Dead
[Lorca on duende and darkness vs. Elytis on the mystery of light]
Lewis Hyde, The Gift
FICTION WORKSHOP II
Achebe, Chinua, Things Fall Apart, 2001
Ballard, JG, Supercannes
Baldwin, James, Giovanni’s Room, 1990
Barnes, Julian, Arthur and George, 2006
Coe, Jonathan, The House of Sleep, 1998
Danticat, Edwige, The Dew Breaker, 2004
Delillo, Don, White Noise, 1985
Greene, Graham, The Quiet American, 1955
Ishiguro, Kazuo, An Artist of the Flying World, 1999
McEwan, Ian, On Chesil Beach, 2007
Mitchell, David, Cloud Atlas, 2005
Morrison, Toni, Beloved, 1997
Sinclair, Ian, Downriver, 1991
Vargas Llosa, Mario, The Feast of the Goat, 2003.
McGahern, John, Amongst Women, 1990
Moore, Brian, Lies of Silence, 1992
Kennedy, A.L., Day, 2007
Michaels, Ann, Fugitive Pieces, 1998
Coetzee, JM, Disgrace, 1999
Roth, Philip, American Pastoral, 1998
Mistry, Rohinton, A Fine Balance, 1997
Pamuk, Orhan, The Black Book, 2006
Gordimer, Nadine, The Pickup, 2002
Smiley, Jane A Thousand Acres, 1992
WRITING WRONGS
George Orwell, Why I write (Penguin, 2004)
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Philip Gourevitch, We wish to inform you that…
Ivan Klima, My Golden Trades
Kevin Toolis, Rebel Hearts
Yashar Kemal, Memed, my Hawk
Francisco Goldman, The Art of Political Murder
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
Agee, James, and Evans, Walker, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Arendt, Hannah; Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Baldwin, James, The Fire Next Time
Cercas, Javier; The Anatomy of a Moment
Duras, Marguerite, The War
Feitlowitz, Marguerite; A Lexicon of terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture
Gelhorn, Martha; The Face of War
Gourevitch, Philip and Morris, Errol; Standard Operating Procedure: A War Story
Hersey, John; Hiroshima
Levi, Primo, The Drowned and the Saved
Moorehead, Caroline; Human Cargo
Roy, Arundhati, The Algebra of Infinite Justice
Toolis, Kevin, Rebel Hearts
Verbitsky, Horacio; Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior
Vuillamy, Ed; Amexica: War along the Borderline
Zephania, Benjamin, Too Black, Too Strong
Baldwin, James, Go Tell it on the Mountain
Ben Jelloun, Tahar, This Blinding Absence of Light
Brink, Andre, A Dry White Season
Ellison, Ralph, The Invisible Man
Figeras, Marcelo, Kamchatka
Hamid, Mohsin, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Haviaras, Stratis, The Heroic Age
Klima, Ivan, My Golden Trades
Kundera, Milan, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Llosa, Mario Vargas, The Feast of the Goat
Pamuk, Orhan, Snow
Steinbeck, John, The Grapes of Wrath
Tsirkas, Stratis, Drifting Cities
Ugresic, Dubravka, The Ministry of Pain

Fish and chips

Do you like going to the seaside?


There is nothing nicer that eating fish and chips smothered in salt and vinegar at the seaside, but your bliss may be short –lived if a seagull spots you.
I’ve had many a chip nicked at Llandudno, and it is very entertaining to watch the cunning birds swoop down and help themselves to people’s snacks and ice creams as they try to enjoy the sea view.
The problem must be rife in seaside towns - a chip shop owner in Bridlington has had to put up signs warning people about chip stealing seagulls because his profits have dwindled through people demanding reimbursement.

So, just be careful if you eat in front of seagulls – they can be quite vicious!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-14129164

Short Story Competition

Here is some information about a short story competition. The maximum length for the stories is 3000 words and the competition rules do not state a theme or a genre – so it seems open to all tastes and styles.


The judge is Dr. Paul McDonald from the University of Wolverhampton.

The successful stories will be published in an anthology, and for those of you who like cash incentives, the first prize is £500.

Get writing!!


http://www.ruberybookaward.com/

RIP Curney (21.5.1996 – 7.7.2011)

My dog died this week. I am heartbroken.
He was the best dog in the world. He was loyal and devoted. He was always ready for a walk, wagging his tail and standing there all excited. He always ate what I gave him and was grateful and very affectionate. He followed me everywhere in the house and garden, like a constant shadow, or one of Philip Pullman’s daemons.
The house is so strange without him. I keep thinking he is just behind the sofa or outside….

Shakespeare sums up death better than I can

Fear no more the heat o’the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done…

Cymbeline, (IV.ii.260-262)