Jess Walter: 'An Exercise of Play and Wonder'
'We've already had great conversations about writing,' Walter said of his time with Professors Eric Freeze and Warren Rosenberg and their students. Walter, a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, talked with students in the College's creative writing track during lunch.
Walter also spoke with students in Professor Warren Rosenberg's Introduction to Fiction literature course. 'The class has been studying some of the greatest short stories ever written, works by Hawthorne, Willa Cather, and Ernest Hemingway,' Professor Rosenberg said. 'We've been intently discussing and debating their meanings and techniques. But of course we couldn't talk to these writers about how and why they wrote their stories. But when we read Jess Walter's wonderful story 'Thief,' the students were excited to be able to engage the author in a discussion of his own story.'
Jess Walter speaks with Professor Rosenberg's students. During his reading that evening, Walter was asked about the future of the novel. He was cautiously optimistic: 'You get an experience reading a novel that you get nowhere else. As a reader, you're part of creating this thing. It's not like a movie. I think of it as being like a piece of music I write, and the reader plays.'