Lithuania: The Writer in the World
Summer 2010 dates TBD
ENGL479S (3 Credits)
This 17-day study in Vilnius, Lithuania offers an intensive and inspiring immersion in the craft of literary writing. Students will hone their craft, strengthen their skills as literary readers and writers, deepen their engagement in concerns of creative process, enter an international dialogue with literary artists, and enjoy the coveted creative jolt of temporary displacement.
Questions considered throughout the course include:
- What does it mean to see the world through a writer’s eyes?
- How does travel impact the writer’s work?
- Are there constants found in one’s writing regardless of the terrain? If so, how can the experience of travel ultimately serve the writer in making even the humdrum hometown delightfully and inspiringly strange?
- What is the role of the artist in America and how does this compare to the role of the artist beyond our own shores?
Faculty & Staff
Merrill Feitell, MFA, Fiction Writing, Columbia University, 2000.
Assistant Professor, Creative Writing, English Department.
In addition to teaching in Maryland's English Department and MFA Program in Creative Writing, Feitell is the author of Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes, which was awarded the Iowa Prize for Short Fiction. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Bronx Council of the Arts, SUNY Purchase, and the state of Maryland. She is also Fiction Editor for the literary journal Forklift, Ohio.
As this program is offered in partnership with Summer Literary Seminars (SLS), students work with the full range of SLS faculty and affiliates—fiction writers, poets, playwrights, essayists, and scholars. For more information, visit http://sumlitsem.org/lithuania/faculty.html.