Arda Collins & Darrel Alejandro Holnes with Courtney Maum

Beyond the Writing of Fiction Series

April 12, 2022

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

In April, our craft installment focuses on Ars Poetica. Join our panelists Arda Collins and Darrel Alejandro Holnes--about the elusive and inspired craft of poetry writing.

As an author of multiple books in different genres, the writer and book coach Courtney Maum is thrilled to host guests from across the literary stratosphere on The Mount's new monthly "Beyond the Writing of Fiction" craft series. From self-published authors to screenwriters, mystery writers and memoir writers and many other kinds, the breadth and diversity of the interviewees will celebrate Edith Wharton's own affection for various forms of writing while focusing on the elusive but essential tool of craft.

 

 

The Mount is a Massachusetts Cultural Council UP designated organization welcoming participants of all disabilities. Please contact The Mount at 413-551-5100 or by email, info@edithwharton.org, to discuss accommodations needed to participate fully in this event.

Beyond the Writing of Fiction has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.

  • Free online program.
  • Monthly discussion--October 2021 through June 2022.
  • May is for short stories; join the discussion with author and cultural critic Fernando Sdrigotti.
  • Join us at The Mount for a live event celebrating Courtney Maum's memoir with WAMC's Sarah LaDuke.
Arda Collins
Buy Star Lake from The Mount's bookshop.org page!

Arda Collins is the author of Star Lake (The Song Cave, April 2022), and It Is Daylight (2009), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. She is a recipient of the Sarton Award in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and her poems have appeared in The New YorkerA Public SpaceThe American Poetry Reviewjubilat, and elsewhere. She received an M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she has also taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry, and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Denver. Apart from her work as a writer and a teacher, she has also been an associate producer on the PBS documentary series Frontline and American Experience. She teaches at Smith College.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes
Author Website

Darrel Alejandro Holnes is an Afro-Panamanian American writer. His plays have received productions or readings at the Kennedy Center for the Arts American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), The Brick Theater, Kitchen Theater Company, Pregones Theater/PRTT, Primary Stages, and elsewhere. Holnes is the author of Migrant Psalms (Northwestern University Press, 2021) and Stepmotherland (Notre Dame Press, 2022). He is the recipient of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize from Letras Latinas, the Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing (Poetry). His poems have previously appeared in the American Poetry Review, Poetry, Callaloo, Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. Holnes is a Cave Canem and CantoMundo fellow who has earned scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Postgraduate Writers Conference at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and residencies nationwide, including a residency at MacDowell. His poem “Praise Song for My Mutilated World” won the C. P. Cavafy Poetry Prize from Poetry International. He is an assistant professor of English at Medgar Evers College, a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches creative writing and playwriting, and a faculty member of the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan
Courtney Maum
Author Website

Courtney Maum is the author of the novels Costalegre (a GOOP book club pick and one of Glamour Magazine’s top books of the decade), I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You and Touch (a New York Times Editor’s Choice and NPR Best Book of the Year selection), the popular guidebook Before and After the Book Deal: A writer’s guide to finishing, publishing, promoting, and surviving your first book, and the forthcoming memoir, The Year of the Horses. A nominee for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, Courtney’s writing has been widely published in such outlets as the New York Times, and O, the Oprah Magazine, and her short story This is Not Your Fault was turned into an Audible Original at Amazon. Courtney is the founder of the artist residency, The Cabins and she privately coaches writers on how to preserve the mystery and joy of the creative process in a culture that wants artists to become brands. You can sign up for her newsletter at CourtneyMaum.com

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.