The Directors’ Cut

EarthGoat and Babies Are Fireproof, two blogs run by Iowa Writers’ Workshop grads, have been studiously discussing — and interviewing! — the finalists for outgoing director Frank Conroy’s position.

I’m probably missing some posts, but here’s what I’ve found:

-A Q & A with Lan Samantha Chang (” I’d like to raise money to be used to guarantee free tuition …”)
-A summary of Chang’s talk on craft (“Sam’s talk was on ‘breakout sections’ of novels – i.e., those sections where the novel breaks from the unities of form that short stories require…”)
-A summary of Jim Shepard’s talk on craft (“He wondered what pulls together the sprawl of Denis Johnson’s ‘Emergency.’ One thing is the tyranny of chronology.”)
-A Q & A with Ben Marcus (“You have to be able to critique without shutting down the writer’s ambitions.”)
-A summary of Marcus’s trial workshop (“Throughout this discussion, BM was amusingly self-deprecating.”)
-A Q & A with Richard Bausch (“Tell them to contact my students at George Mason University. They’ll tell you every class is actually a six-hour class. We meet for three hours and then we go to a bar for another three.”)
-A summary of Bausch’s trial workshop (“I don’t teach writing. I teach patience.”)

(What I really want to hear, though, is Connie’s thoughts…)

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.