For our workshop leader and retreat co-facilitator Melody Nixon, one of the best ways to learn more about writing is to talk with other writers. To mark today’s inauguration day in the US, here she is in dialog with the winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Autobiography, Margo Jefferson:
Melody Nixon: What is the role of literature in a time [of political unrest]?
Margo Jefferson: Talking about the role of literature can make one veer toward too-grand idealism. But aren’t we writers trying to show what goes unseen in everyday life, and tell what gets suppressed? Give it coherence and urgency, and beauty?… when literature does its aesthetic and ethical work, it makes… changes feel possible, bearable; even desirable and revelatory.
—for Electric Literature.
Read more from Margo Jefferson here. Check out Melody’s other interviews here, and be sure to get your application in by January 27th to attend her Unblocking Creativity and Contemporary American Prose workshops as part of the First Days of Spring Retreat, which includes a discussion about publishing. (Applications by January 27th receive an early-bird discount.)
