Craft Seminar: Adventures in the Archive with Benjamin Anastas
Craft Seminar: Adventures in the Archive with Benjamin Anastas
3 Sessions: Tuesdays, April 2, 9, 16
7:00-9:00pm ET
Benjamin Anastas
25 Students
Benjamin Anastas is the author of the novels An Underachiever’s Diary (Dial Press) and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance (FSG). His memoir Too Good to Be True (Little A) was a national bestseller, and his essays, literary journalism, reviews and short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Oxford American, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Bookforum and The Best American Essays 2012. He has been the recipient of residency fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation and the MacDowell Colony.
At some point in every writer's life, a creative trail you've been following will lead you to a secret trove of family documents or a collection of papers held by a research institution. It can be confusing--and intimidating--to navigate the rarified world of the archive, and primary documents themselves can be inscrutable, resisting easy interpretation and use. This three-part class will provide interested students a primer in how to use primary documents in your creative work, starting with concrete examples from a variety of contemporary writers and my own work as a literary journalist and fiction writer. We will also cover the nuts and bolts of navigating special collections, from making your first approach to dealing with "fair use" questions, handling privacy issues and dealing with permissions.
In the first session I'll give a presentation on the fundamentals of navigating the archive and give some examples of how non-literary material (letters, photographs, scientific papers) can be generative of new work. Students will be provided with a list of archives with digital collections for public use and will have the chance to choose a document to use as source material for a new essay or a piece of fiction. They can also use a document of their own. In sessions two and three, students will propose a new creative work to the class and receive constructive feedback; we will also be looking at further examples of essays and fiction that use archival material.
Workshop Highlights:
Students will learn the nuts-and-bolts of navigating special collections, from the initial approach to dealing with "fair use" questions, handling privacy issues, and permissions.
Students will gain familiarity with using online archives and undertake their own adventure in the archive by choosing the source material for a new project.
Students will receive supportive critical feedback on a new project they propose and begin to write.
2 full scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
Benjamin Anastas is the author of the novels An Underachiever’s Diary, recently re-released in paperback by the Dial Press, and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance (FSG), which was a New York Times notable book. His memoir Too Good to Be True (Little A) was a national bestseller. Other work has appeared in The Oxford American, The Paris Review, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Bookforum, The Yale Review, The New Yorker magazine and The Best American Essays. He teaches literature and writing at Bennington College.
