Tag Archives: Joan Wickersham

That Moment When the Project Comes Alive

Author Joan Wickersham Presents First in Writers' Workshop Series
Photo by Matthew Cavanaugh
Photo by Matthew Cavanaugh

In her talk at the Grubbs Gallery on September 23, author Joan Wickersham offered to break down the minutiae of two of her books, about suicide and love, respectively.

“If you’re a writer, that’s what you want to know: How did a book get written?” she said, adding that, “both were messy subjects and very structured books.”

The first of the two, The Suicide Index, took Ms. Wickersham 11 years to write in part, she said, because the initial finished version was a novel, a “very polite, dead book.” So when she began to edit the material, Ms. Wickersham found herself throwing out every chapter.

“I was trying to treat suicide as a conventional story,” she said, shaking her head.

What emerged instead—once she had disposed of the idea that she could take her father’s suicide and turn it into a novel—was a series of fragments that the author then arranged alphabetically, imposing a form of order on a chaotic experience.

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Writers’ Workshop Series Opens with Joan Wickersham

This year's series will feature lectures by George Colt, Jen duBois, and Anne Fadiman
Joan Wickersham. Photo by Michael Lionstar
Joan Wickersham. Photo by Michael Lionstar

An author who writes of heartbreak, regret, and unbidden intimacy will lead off Williston Northampton School’s long-running author lecture series, now in its 17th year.

Author and essayist Joan Wickersham will present the first in this year’s Writers’ Workshop Series on September 23 at 7:00 p.m. in the Dodge Room, Reed Campus Center.

Ms. Wickersham is the acclaimed author of a book of fiction, The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story (Knopf 2012); a memoir, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order (Harcourt 2008); and a novel, The Paper Anniversary (Viking Adult, 1993).

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